Brazil Announces R$2.5 Billion Investment Plan to Build One of World's Top Ten Supercomputers

en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Brazilian government has announced a public investment plan totaling R$2.5 billion (€416 million) to expand the country's national artificial intelligence infrastructure. The core project is the construction of one of the ten most powerful supercomputers in the world, alongside the development of another supercomputing facility in partnership with Chinese companies, and the creation of Brazilian chips based on an open architecture. Officials stated that the three initiatives aim to reduce Brazil's dependence on foreign computing power and expand the infrastructure needed for AI model development and training.

The plan was announced by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over the weekend at an event in Natal, the capital of the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte. Approximately 40% of the funds will be used to purchase the supercomputer, which will be installed at the Augusto Severo Technology Park at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Science and Technology Minister Luciana Santos stated that choosing the Northeast region aims to "reduce regional disparities," and the availability of clean energy in the local power grid was also a key consideration.

The AI-dedicated supercomputer is expected to become operational next year, with a computing capacity of 7,200 petaflops, which the Brazilian government says will place it among the world's top ten AI-dedicated high-performance systems. Compared to the current most powerful equipment, the Santos Dumont supercomputer (27 petaflops) located inland in Rio de Janeiro, according to Folha de S.Paulo, the latter would take 11 years to train a GPT-4-level large model, while the new supercomputer would take just one month. Marcelo Fernandes, director of the IMD/UFRN Artificial Intelligence Center, cited as an example that a person performing one mathematical operation per second without stopping would need approximately 228 billion years to complete the calculations that the new supercomputer can perform in one second.

The supercomputer tender conditions require the executing company to implement technology transfer, involve Brazilian suppliers, and provide training for approximately 5,000 local workers. Brazilian media reported that U.S. chip giant Nvidia is the only supplier meeting the tender's technical requirements; however, according to Folha de S.Paulo, assembly orders are distributed among multiple companies, including Lenovo, U.S. companies Hewlett-Packard and Dell, and French company Bull.

The second project is located in Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with Chinese tech giant Huawei, Chinese AI company iFlytek, and the Brazilian National Education and Research Network (RNP, Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa), an organization under the Ministry of Science and Technology. The project involves an investment of R$1.27 billion (€211 million) over five years, with operations planned to begin in July 2027. For reference, the private sector will build a TikTok data center at the Pecém Port complex near Fortaleza in Ceará state, with an investment of nearly R$50 billion (€8.3 billion), making the aforementioned estimated amounts relatively low in comparison. Facing the AI boom and growing demand for cloud-hosted data centers, the Lula administration has long attracted major tech companies with abundant renewable energy supply and tax incentives, and this public investment is a new addition to those efforts.

The third technological initiative is a long-term strategy spanning 10 to 15 years, aimed at expanding Brazil's chip development capabilities and reducing dependence on technologies controlled by a few companies or countries, which likely refers to the United States and China. The plan involves an investment of R$250 million (€41.6 million), with the public and private sectors each bearing half. Chip manufacturing will be based on the RISC-V open architecture, allowing components to be developed and customized without relying on designs from major tech companies. The project will be implemented by the Eldorado Institute in Campinas in partnership with Barcelona's innovation ecosystem in Spain. According to a government statement, the initiative aims to expand Brazil's capabilities in high-performance computing and key artificial intelligence technologies.