Taiwan is gearing up to take complete advantage of science and technology to grapple with the epidemic. Minister Wu Tsung-tsong of the Ministry of Science and Technology announced on Sep 6th that the state-built supercomputer Taiwania 3 would officially start offering support. 

The National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) of the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabls), overseen by the Ministry of Science and Technology, has launched the "Tech v Virus 2.0" program, with services such as upgraded Taiwania supercomputers, Taiwan Computing Cloud (TWCC), DAS data analysis service, and AIoT platform, inviting academia, research organizations, start-up companies, and industries to use technology to fight the pandemic. The NCHC launched the "Defending Taiwan- Fighting the Pandemic with Technology Project" in 2020, offering free access to NCHC computing resources for approved proposals from the public.

Taiwania 3 is the latest HPC high-performance computing research and development platform built by the NCHC. With 2.7 Petaflops computing power, Taiwania 3 offers a high-efficiency parallel and distributed CPU environment which has a stand-alone speed 20% faster than Taiwania 1 and total computing power 300% as much as Taiwania 1. Taiwania 3 can support large-scale application research and development services in Taiwan, from biomedical science, climate change, environmental science, emerging energy projects, speeding up the output of results.

In addition to the early activation of part of the services from Taiwania 3, the "Tech v Virus 2.0" program also joins forces with Taiwan Web Service Corporation, a private company, to offer more professional and comprehensive services via Taiwania supercomputers series, endeavoring to combat the pandemic.

Director-General Shepherd Shi of the NCHC said that many scientists and engineers had used their professional expertise in 2020 to contribute to fighting the pandemic. With this year's "Tech v Virus 2.0", the NCHC has not only upgraded the services, including Taiwania 3 and a one-stop data analysis tool DAS, but also joined forces with Taiwan Web Service Corporation.