Fastest U.S. Supercomputer Enlisted in Fight Against Coronavirus

(Bloomberg) -- The fastest supercomputer in the U.S. is being put to work in the search for a vaccine to prevent the coronavirus and treat those infected by it.

The Summit, housed in the U.S. Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is capable of 200,000 trillion calculations per second. It is being used to analyze health data as part of the Covid-19 Insights Partnership announced Tuesday by the agency as well as the departments of Veterans affairs and Health and Human Services.

“Summit’s unmatched capacity to analyze massive integrated datasets and divine insights will help researchers identify and advance potential treatments and enhance outcomes for Covid-19 patients with unprecedented speed,” the agencies said in a statement.

The Energy Department said earlier this year that its computers were being used to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Heath Organization conduct modeling on the virus.

The Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, announced in March, is making use of $1 billion worth of computers at government and research institutions around the world.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.