Arctur-1, a supercomputer in Slovenia which is used by scientific and technical users, has announced that they will accept Bitcoin for computing services. The Arctur computer itself boasts impressive stats ” Arctur-1 was built with 84 IBM iDataPlex dx360 M3 nodes, each with two Intel Xeon X5650 cores (6 cores clocked at 2,66 GHz) for a total of 1008 cores, 2,66 terabytes of memory (2,66 gigabytes per core), reaching a peak processing power of 10 TFlops (Rpeak). Compute nodes are connected with Infiniband QDR 40 Gbit/s, The supercomputer is managed by Arctur.”
I interviewed Arctur CTO Marko Kobal to find out more about the project and why they decided to accept Bitcoin.
Bitcoinist interview
What is the Arctur project?
Arctur is a leading service provider in the field of supercomputing in South Eastern Europe. HPC on-demand, system administration services, code optimization and parallelization are offered through the XaaS (Everything as a Service) model which provides our custoemrs with substantial savings compared to purchasing and maintaining their own equipment. High level of investment in research and development, exemplar cooperation with academic and scientific institutions and excellent network of international partners enables us to pursue our strategy, which continuous expansion into more complex computing environments and new global IT markets.
Where is Arctur located?
Arctur is a SMB from Europe, Slovenia.
What services does Arctur offer?
Arctur offers services in the field of supercomputing (HPC on-demand, system administration services, code optimization and parallelization) as well as general use cloud computing services such as virtual machines and dedicated servers rentals. We also developed several advanced web applications such as our own content management system (ADS) and project management solution (www.4pm.si).
What influenced your decision to accept Bitcoin for services?
We believe in the future of Bitcoin as well as some other digital currencies and would like to offer our customer a wide range of paying options.
Are you keeping your Bitcoin or converting it to fiat currency?
We are processing our Bitcoin payments through BitPay and currently we convert the majority of Bitcoins to fiat currency.
Conclusion
Arctur’s decision to integrate Bitcoin payments will allow technical users the ability to pay for super-computing services with Bitcoin. Arctur is the first supercomputer to accept Bitcoin for services. Customers of Arctur can now purchases services with Paypal, Credit Card, and Bitcoin. As Bitcoin continues to grow, people will be able to spend their coins for a wide variety of products and services. Arctur gives people access to a variety of services that would not be possible with infrastructure that is owned by most companies. By offering cloud computing services on a supercomputer like Arctur, users have access to computing power they would not likely have access to through other means. You can read more about Arctur here.
Image via Arctur.