Brazil’s Petrobras will invest $89 million to acquire five new Lenovo supercomputers.

The systems, which will be housed at the state-owned oil and gas company’s development and innovation center in Cenpes, Rio de Janeiro, will begin assembly this year and are slated to be operational in 2025.

Technical information has only been provided about one of the systems, a 73 petaflops supercomputer that will replace the company’s Phoenix, Atlas, and Dragão machines.

The unnamed system will be the largest of the five supercomputers and, according to Petrobras, will be the most “eco-efficient” machine in Latin America, with sustainability baked into the design of the machine and the room where it will be installed. Petrobras will use the supercomputer to process seismic data and create simulations of the earth’s subsurface, allowing the company to identify new oil and gas reserves.

“The acquisition of new supercomputers is of enormous strategic importance to Petrobras, as it keeps the company at the forefront of technology in the oil and gas sector, in relation to subsurface seismic imaging,” said Sylvia Anjos, director of exploration and production, Petrobras. “With this update, we will be able to expand the execution of seismic processing projects with state-of-the-art technologies.”

The renewal of the supercomputers forms part of the company’s 2024-2028 strategic plan which, in addition to funding upgrades to adapt and improve Cenpes, includes commitments to decarbonization and energy transition.

In March 2023, Petrobras deployed its first AI supercomputer, Tatu, comprising 224 Nvidia GPUs with 80GB of memory distributed across 11 racks in a 7.4m row.