The government has built high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure in Indonesia that can be used to train large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) models and analyse massive datasets.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the foreign ministry said on June 18 that they held an opening ceremony for the HPC infrastructure built as a Korea-ASEAN digital cooperation project by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) and Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency.

The project is being 추진 under support from the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund (AKCF). The project period runs from 2024 to 2028, with a total of $10 million invested. The goal is to share South Korea’s HPC construction and operations technology and know-how with ASEAN countries.

The supercomputer built in Indonesia has performance of about 4.2 petaflops (PF). One PF is a unit of performance that can process 1,000 trillion operations per second. HPC infrastructure is a key foundation for training large-scale AI models and analysing massive datasets, but most ASEAN countries, except Thailand and Singapore, have not secured related infrastructure. The ministry expects the system to become a foundation for expanding the data-use ecosystem not only in Indonesia but also across the ASEAN region.

Through 2028, it will also run invitation-based training and technical education for about 160 local operations personnel. It will localise the National Science and Technology Knowledge Information Service (NTIS) operated by KISTI to support ASEAN in operating and developing the infrastructure on its own.

Kim Kyung-man (김경만), director general for AI policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said it was an achievement that put into practice the Korea-ASEAN CSP vision of growing together by sharing South Korea’s AI innovation capabilities with ASEAN. He said the government would support follow-up cooperation, including technology exchanges and joint research, to lay the foundation for leading multilateral AI cooperation.