Utilising the processing power of about 600 personal computers, the supercomputer will provide more precise and complex meteorological and hydrological data for forecasters to use in predicting the weather.

Worth around EUR 640,000, the supercomputer is part of the biggest Slovenian project for monitoring and analysing the water environment in Slovenia, dubbed BOBER, which is valued at EUR 33m in total.

The BOBER project was launched following several cases of severe flooding in Slovenia in recent years.

ARSO officials told the press on Wednesday that the supercomputer can carry out 20 billion mathematical operations per second, a task that would take one person around 20 years to perform.

The machine with two terabytes (TB) of RAM and 120 TB disk space uses around 30 kWh of electricity, equivalent to the heating system for two houses, and will be cooled by groundwater, Jure Jerman from the ARSO told the press conference according to the daily Žurnal24.

Carried out as part of the Operational programme of environmental and transport infrastructure development for the period 2007-2013, the BOBER project is partly financed from EU cohesion funds.