Hungarian research institutes have decided to offer thousands of processors and several terabytes of memory to fight the pandemic

The SZTAKI (Institute for Computer Sciences and Control) and the Wigner Research Centre for Physics (Wigner FK) offer thousands of processors and terabytes of the computing power of their own cloud computing capacity integrated with MTA Cloud (the Hungarian Research Cloud) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The members of the Hungarian Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH), the SZTAKI and the Wigner Research Centre, with the support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), have decided to offer the “MTA Cloud” (which was previously created for scientific purposes) with their own computing capacity (thousands of processors and terabytes of memory) to combat the new coronavirus epidemic.

In the first step, SZTAKI has connected its machines to the Folding @ Home international research project and to the community computing platform. The first projects by Folding@Home are examining how coronaviruses bind to the ACE2 receptor.
The Wigner Data Centre has experience with medical projects and high-security data management; thus the Centre can provide reliable IT support for virus research and genome sequencing efforts.

Meanwhile, Hungarian researchers are also joining the fight with their own projects: as needs arrive, resources are being redeployed from Folding@Home to Hungarian projects.