Researchers from Industry, Academia and Research Institutes Sought to Use National Supercomputer No. 6

[Financial News] Researchers from industry, academia and research institutes will be recruited ahead of the December launch of National Supercomputer No. 6, a core infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI)-based scientific research.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) announced on the 10th that they will begin accepting applications on the 9th for the 2026 National Supercomputer No. 6 Innovation Support Program. The call is open to researchers from industry, academia and research institutes seeking to use the system's high-performance computing resources.
National Supercomputer No. 6 is a key national scientific infrastructure that eliminates the need to purchase expensive graphics processing units (GPUs) individually or rely on private cloud services. It is expected to be used broadly across various scientific and technological fields, including large-scale computational science, data simulation and AI-based scientific research.
National Supercomputer No. 6 is equipped with 8,496 of the latest GPUs, including the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, and 9,936 CPUs. It offers a theoretical computing performance of 614 petaflops, 205 petabytes of storage and ultra-high-speed network performance of more than 400 Gbps. Compared with Supercomputer No. 5, these figures represent 24 times the theoretical computing performance, 10 times the storage capacity and four times the network performance. Based on the latest global Top500 supercomputer rankings, it is estimated to be listed among the world's top 10 systems.
After signing a construction contract with supercomputer manufacturer Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in May last year, the system installation and basic inspections were completed in August. Performance and stability testing is currently underway, with official service scheduled to begin in December.
Depending on the target users and intended uses, National Supercomputer No. 6 will be organized and operated through three programs: National Strategy, R&D Innovation and Industrial Innovation.
The National Strategy Program will allocate approximately 30% of the total resources to national-level projects whose urgency and importance are recognized, including projects aimed at securing national strategic technologies. Priority will be given to key initiatives such as K-Moonshot and the seven SEED programs. The R&D Innovation Program will broadly provide computing resources for R&D to general researchers from industry, academia and research institutes, with approximately 55% of the total resources allocated to it. In particular, an exploratory research track will be newly established to support the initial validation of ideas by providing resources after only a minimum review; the allocation will be equivalent to the resources of one node.
An Industrial Innovation Program will also be newly established for industry researchers. In addition to computing resources, it will provide consulting and technical support from KISTI. Approximately 15% of the total resources will be allocated to this program.
Applications for official service users will be accepted from September 28 through 6 p.m. on October 16 via the National Supercomputing Center website. Resources will be allocated in December to users selected through document reviews and deliberation by an evaluation committee. Researchers wishing to use the pilot service before the official launch may apply through the National Supercomputing Center website from September 23 to October 8. Selected researchers will receive pilot services from late October through mid-November.

[email protected] Yeon Ji-an Reporter