Shaheen Computer

Shaheen Computer is a supercomputer with a high-performance computing system owned by King Abdullah University for Science and Technology 'KAUST', Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. KAUST has been operating on Shaheen since 2009, starting with 'Shaheen I', followed by 'Shaheen II', and then 'Shaheen III', to provide cutting-edge capabilities in supercomputing and artificial intelligence 'AI' for scientific research in vital fields.

In 2023, 'Shaheen III' was ranked as the most powerful supercomputer in the Middle East, according to the (Top500) website. It also ranked twentieth in the global ranking for the most powerful supercomputers.

Several national organizations and entities benefit from the services of Shaheen Computer, including King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, along with many entities that utilize its computing capabilities to develop their work and study new fields of research that contribute to the diversification of the national economy. Additionally, petroleum, gas, and petrochemical industries in the Kingdom benefit from the high-performance computing services provided by Shaheen Computer, namely companies such as the Arabian American Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) to develop businesses in the field of oil and gas exploration, and in chemical research and catalysis.

Since its establishment, supercomputing has been a key element in KAUST's research, technologies, and curriculum. AI successfully combined the strength of supercomputing with the specialized required capabilities to build machine learning models and train large amounts of data. Additionally, supercomputing enhances KAUST's AI work by integrating a machine-learning development environment, combining the machine-learning software platform with key supercomputing technologies.

KAUST uses Shaheen Computer for mathematical analysis, modeling, and simulation with applications in physical, chemical, biological, and environmental processes, materials science, exploration, and reservoir management, as well as big data processing, such as bioinformatics and statistics, visual computing and supercomputing.

Research and experiments also rely mainly on high-performance computing processes, such as the Clean Combustion Research Center, whose research involves conducting hundreds of combustion reactions to convert fossil fuels into water and carbon dioxide. Most of the combustion research conducted at the center aims to achieve optimal use of energy from fuel by inventing effective methods to exploit heavy fuel oils and get rid of difficult-to-burn oil residues to produce fuel that is easy to burn, does not consume many materials, and is cost-effective.

KAUST has one of the world’s leading supercomputing centers, and its research relies on its first supercomputer, Shaheen I, launched in 2009. KAUST Supercomputing Lab worked on it for six years, and it ranked fourteenth among the world’s most powerful supercomputers in 2009, according to the (TOP500) website. It was used in many fields, such as global climate modeling, oil well modeling, and bioinformatics analysis of plants resistant to salinity and drought.

KAUST acquired the Cray XC40 supercomputer system and named it Shaheen II. It weighs approximately 109 t and is twenty-five times faster than its predecessor, Shaheen I. Its units were shipped to Jeddah Airport on March 15, 2015, in 123 boxes by plane from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Shaheen II and similar supercomputers comprise nearly 6,100 processors working together to process data at a very high capacity saving time and effort to reach results. Approximately 66 percent of the research groups affiliated with KAUST faculty rely on the Shaheen supercomputer II in their research endeavors. In 2015, Shaheen II ranked seventh according to the (Top500) website. Shaheen recorded an impressive speed, exceeding 5.5 PFLOPS, utilizing nearly two hundred thousand core processors. The system encompasses 17.6 pb of storage units and 790 tb of memory.

KAUST obtained Shaheen III, developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a company specializing in supercomputer manufacturing. It is approximately six times faster than the Shaheen II system, with a processing power exceeding five hundred thousand modern-generation computers (MacBook Pro) operating at the same time. It was constructed using the HPE Cray EX supercomputer architecture, which is present in three of the top ten supercomputers in the world.

KAUST utilizes Shaheen III to support constructing and testing predictive mathematical models using traditional simulations based on differential equations, statistical simulations, and machine-learning techniques that use neural networks. These mathematical models can be applied in many fields, including scientific discovery and engineering design.

In its initial phase, Shaheen III was utilized to enhance research in many fields that contribute to achieving sustainability goals, such as research projects to develop materials, chemical catalysts, alternative fuels, carbon sequestration, and bioinformatics. Moreover, it can create highly accurate models in domains such as atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, and computational fluid dynamics used in Formula One cars. Shaheen III also provides cutting-edge scientific imaging and analytical capabilities in domains such as oil reservoir exploration, medical imaging, and non-destructive evaluation of structures and constructions.