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Petrobras to use national supercomputer for AI

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Petrobras to use national supercomputer for AI

Brazil state oil giant Petrobras will use a supercomputer with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to carry out advanced petrophysical research.

The SciMining computer, developed at the Brazilian center of physics research (CBPF), an entity linked to the ministry of science, technology, innovations and communications (MCTIC), is expected to be set up soon at Petrobras' Leopoldo Miguez R&D center in Rio de Janeiro.

The computer is able to explore huge amounts of data in search of consistent patterns (correlations, temporal or spatial sequences) in order to anticipate business and operational insights, MCTIC said in a statement.

“Petrobras has a big challenge, which is to understand the volume of data behind carbonate rocks. The company currently spends a lot of money on characterizing these rocks. Using sophisticated tools to analyze this amount of data is critical,” physicist Maury Correa, responsible for the project at Petrobras, was quoted as saying.

Correa said that the partnership with CBPF led to the development of “global cutting-edge techniques and technologies.”

This is, however, not the first supercomputer to be used by Petrobras, although it is the first to be developed exclusively for advanced AI purposes. The company operates what is considered to be Latin America's largest supercomputer, known as Fênix, which has total memory of 55,296GB and a central processing unit with 48,384 cores.

Located in Rio de Janeiro, Fênix is the first of four other units intended to help Petrobras increase its capacity to process geophysical data by a factor of 15 between 2018 and 2020.

SciMining, in turn, is powered with 32 processing cores, has a 4TB hard disk, 500GB on a solid state disk (for operating system storage) and 128GB of RAM memory (expandable to 1TB).

The computer also has six video cards containing 26,112 graphics processing units, 84 teraflops for performance and 66GB of graphics processing memory. 

The SciMining project was developed over the last 10 months by a team of experts from CBPF's technological development coordination department (Cotec) as part of the joint development project with Petrobras.

Six other SciMining machines are being developed at CBPF, according to MCTIC. A similar machine for artificial intelligence applied to astrophysics is in the final stages of development.

R&D INVESTMENTS

Petrobras reported its financial figures on Friday, posting net income of US$4.8bn, up 72.2% year-on-year, mainly due to the conclusion of the sale of gas pipeline system TAG.

According to the company's earnings results, investments – including those in research and development activities and operational efficiency gains – totaled US$2.6bn in the quarter, down 17.6%.

The company did not mention expenditures related to SciMining.

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