Baltasar Sete Sóis is one of the main characters from José Saramago’s novel Memorial do Convento (English title: Baltasar and Blimunda). It is a story about dreams, hard work and passion in life and in science; we thought it would be an appropriate nickname for our beloved supercomputer, a machine which is helping us to pursue our own passion: to solve the mysteries of Einstein’s equations.

Baltasar is part of the “DyBHo” ERC Starting Grant awarded to Prof. Vitor Cardoso, to study and understand dynamical black holes.

Baltasar was designed to help solve a specific problem with a specific implementation (cactus based). The goal was to have 4GB per CPU, a minimum of 200 CPUs and at least 500MB/s of network storage capability. Even though it was designed to address a specific application, it exceeded the group’s expectations to a point so good that we can consider it an all-arround cluster.

More information about Baltasar available here.