Petrobras puts the Harpia supercomputer into operation

Petrobras has put the Harpia supercomputer into operation. The machine, equivalent to 10 million cell phones or 200,000 laptops, will help the company maintain its leadership in processing capacity in Latin America. Valued at R$435 million, it is the largest of the five new supercomputers purchased by the company, which together cost R$500 million and will increase Petrobras’ computational capacity by more than 60%.

The acquisition of new supercomputers is strategic in keeping the company at the technological forefront of the oil and gas sector in subsurface seismic imaging. Petrobras’ trajectory is marked by the constant pursuit of excellence in everything it does. That is why the company invests in R&D&I and in the most advanced technological resources, whose results are recognized by both the industry and society.

The new HPC, High Performance Computer, will be used by Petrobras geophysicists to process raw seismic data and transform it into detailed images of the subsurface. “It’s like creating a 3D map of the rock layers beneath the surface, with much sharper and more accurate images of geological structures—essential for identifying petroleum systems and potential oil and gas reservoirs,” explains Petrobras Exploration and Production Director, Sylvia Anjos.

By renewing and expanding its capacity for processing geophysical and geological data, the company will obtain faster and more accurate results for the operational challenges of ultra-deepwater environments and new exploratory areas, such as the pre-salt and the Equatorial Margin.

A Giant
The renewal of the supercomputers is part of the company’s strategy to keep its technological infrastructure up to date. The Harpia HPC weighs about 50 tons and measures 50 meters in length, considering all parts in a straight line. It will have around 146 PFlops Rpeak. One Petaflop (PFlop) equals one quadrillion Flops, or floating-point operations per second. Once installation is complete, it will single-handedly replace the Fênix, Atlas, and Dragão HPCs, which will be decommissioned—a normal process in the computing industry.