Petrobras activates first AI-powered supercomputer for E&P

Petrobras has activated a new high-performance supercomputer to support its exploration and production (E&P) operations.

Dubbed Tatu (armadillo in Portuguese), the 36mn-real (US$6.9mn) computer is the company’s first with artificial intelligence capabilities. It went live in assisted operation in a pilot phase and should reach full operating capacity by the end of the month, the Brazilian oil giant said in a statement.

Petrobras did not officially state who the supplier is, but a company spokesperson told BNamericas that the project is being carried out by French IT firm Atos, which has previously supplied the company's supercomputers.

Tatu was installed at the company's Cenpes RD&I center in Rio de Janeiro and will mine data to resolve demands in a more agile and accurate way, "with increased exploratory success and cost reductions in exploration and production activities," Petrobras said.

It has 2.4 petaflops in processing capacity, equivalent to 462,000 smartphones or 12,000 laptops, and power consumption of 216kW. Without detailing, Petrobras said that Tatu was built to be “ecoefficient.”

The supercomputer also has 64TB of RAM and 224 graphic processor units (GPUs). It occupies 11 cabinets that are 7.4m long.

“Petrobras has practically doubled its data processing capacity in the last four years. This is important to enable digital technology initiatives, benefiting the efficiency of operations [and] making the company more resilient to changes in business scenarios,” said Paulo Palaia, Petrobras head of digital transformation and innovation.

“Furthermore, increasingly specialized machines, dedicated to different activities, allow the company to continue investing in research and developing innovations,” he added.

As reported by BNamericas, the company disbursed over 4bn reais in tech R&D expenses last year, up roughly 1bn reais from 2021.

Of the company's total 2022 tech R&D expenses, the exploration and production (E&P) area accounted for 3.48bn reais, up from 2.25bn reais in 2021.

ALSO READ: Snapshot: Petrobras’ booming tech investments

Petrobras' current strategic plan, which outlines US$78bn in investments for 2023-27, earmarks US$2.1bn for digital transformation and innovation.

SUPERCOMPUTERS

Tatu is Petrobras’ sixth supercomputer.

The previous one, Gaia, is expected to be operating by the end of this month. Gaia is being assembled by Dell and is set to increase Petrobras' total computer processing capacity from 63 petaflops to around 70 petaflops. That projection does not include the capacity added by Tatu.

The company’s other four high-performance computers are Pégaso, which started working at full capacity last December, Atlas, Dragão and Fênix.

Pégaso, which Petrobras claims to be its biggest and the fifth most powerful in the global oil and gas industry, has processing capacity of 21 petaflops and power consumption of 1.5MW.

In other words, Pégaso has nearly nine times more capacity than Tatu.

Pégaso was assembled by Atos, with Supermicro servers delivered by Brazil’s Positivo and GPUs provided by Nvidia.