The U.S. government has launched a public-private partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Google Cloud Platform (GPC), Microsoft and other technology companies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The effort, known as the COVID-19 HPC Consortium, "encompasses computing capabilities from some of the most powerful and advanced computers in the world. We hope to empower researchers around the world to accelerate understanding of the COVID-19 virus and the development of treatments and vaccines to help address infections. Consortium members manage a range of computing capabilities that span from small clusters to some of the very largest supercomputers in the world."
Multiple government agencies and various organizations are involved in the effort. The lineup includes, among others:
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
- U.S. DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)
- NASA High-End Computing Capability
- Amazon Web Services
- MIT/Massachusetts Green HPC Center (MGHPCC)
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- IBM Research
Public-Private Partnerships vs. Coronavirus
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the HPC consortium on March 22, 2020. Separately, Honeywell is shifting resources from Massachusetts and activating operations in Rhode Island to manufacture masks for healthcare workers, federal officials indicated.
This is the second public-private partnership that Trump has announced to fight the coronavirus pandemic. The other involves WalMart, Target, Walgreens and CVS providing drive-through testing for the virus, among other services.
