Eni reveals HPC4, its new industrial supercomputer and the biggest of its kind in the world

Eni has built the world's biggest industrial supercomputer near Milan, hailing a 'significant' step in its digital transformation.

The Italian energy giant has unveiled HPC4, a processing unit the size of a football pitch and which will enable it to scan for oil and gas reservoirs deep underground within a radius of thousands of miles.

According to a statement, HPC4 has a peak performance of 18.6 Petaflops. Its supercomputer ecosystem is from an 'extremely advanced and complex proprietary ecosystem of algorithms'.

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Eni is currently embarking on a root-and-branch digital transformation process throughout its value chain, from exploration to the management of 'big data' generated in the operational phase.

"The investments devoted to reinforcing the supercomputing infrastructure and the development of algorithms are a significant part of Eni’s digital transformation process," said Eni's CEO Claudio Descalzi.

"We can store and process enormous quantities of data for geophysical imaging, the modelling of oil systems and reservoirs, in addition to using predictive and cognitive computing algorithms for all our business activities."