Iran says it is planning to build an AI supercomputer and will have it in operation sometime next year. It will have to work around U.S. sanctions to get the tech it needs, but it has succeeded in doing so in the past.

The news came in a tweet last weekend by Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran's minister of information and communication technology. It was in Persian, but translated by Google, Jahromi said the new supercomputer, "is due to launch next year: 100 times more powerful than previous ones, great!"

This supercomputer, wrote Jahromi, "will serve people to support businesses with the goal of developing artificial intelligence." The system is named "Simorgh" after a mythical bird.

ابررایانه ایرانی "سیمرغ" تا سال آینده آماده میشود: صد برابر قدرتمندتر از نمونههای قبلی، عالی و فوقالعاده!

این ابررایانه برای حمایت از کسبوکارها با هدف توسعه هوشمصنوعی به مردم خدمت خواهد کرد.

هزار آفرین به سازندگان جوان و خلاق. بچهها ممنونیم!

⁧#آیندهروشن⁩✨ — MJ Azari Jahromi (@azarijahromi) August 17, 2019

Translated from Persian by Google:

The Simorgh Iranian supercomputer is due to launch next year: 100 times more powerful than previous ones, great! This supercomputer will serve people to support businesses with the goal of developing artificial intelligence. Thousands of happy young and creative creators. Thanks guys!

Iran isn't doing anything different from other nations in building a system designed for AI data intensive workloads. Take France, for instance. It is building a supercomputer to accelerate development of its AI industries. The French system, due in October, may rank on the Top500 list as one of the 20 most powerful supercomputers in the world. Since 1993, the Top500 list has ranked the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers twice a year.

However, the difference between France and Iran in how the systems are built is considerable. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is building the French system. Iran, if it wants U.S. processors, may have to work through the black market because of U.S. sanctions.

Trade restrictions have not prevented Iran from acquiring what it needs. In 2007, for instance, Iran's Amirkabir University of Technology announced it had assembled a Linux-based system using 216 AMD Opteron cores. It even published photographs, since removed, of the system under assembly. Iran has announced supercomputer efforts in 2011 and 2014. It's unclear what Jahromi is benchmarking against when he characterized the forthcoming system as "100 times more powerful."