The supercomputer BOB, operational since July 5, 2019, has completed its queues at MACC, marking the end of its productive tenure. During its lifetime, BOB supported multiple national and international research projects and significantly promoted cooperation between the scientific and business communities.

BOB was a significant asset to the National Strategy for Advanced Computing. Its impressive 1 petaFLOP of compute performance capacity increased the national computing capacity tenfold. BOB took part in 112 projects with 309 users and worked for 33,904,713 CPU hours. The supercomputer’s contribution to medicine, earth and space, physics, and mobility, among others, has been quite significant.

BOB was gifted to MACC by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), named after Robert A. Peterson from the University of Texas, who was a great promoter of this initiative. This supercomputer provided new opportunities in Portugal, supporting research groups dedicated to supercomputing, research, and work areas with increasing needs for digital processing information.

Although the queues have now been closed at MACC, the MACC team is currently working on newer resources that will be available soon. These resources aim to further advance research in Portugal and build on BOB’s legacy.

BOB will be remembered for its tremendous contribution to Portugal’s scientific and business communities, aligning with European goals and the National Strategy for Advanced Computing.