The Latin American Supercomputing Ecosystem for Science

Large, expensive, computing-intensive research initiatives have historically promoted high-performance computing (HPC) in the wealthiest countries, most notably in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China. The exponential impact of the Internet and of artificial intelligence (AI) has pushed HPC to a new level, affecting economies and societies worldwide. In Latin America, this was no different. Nevertheless, the use of HPC in science affected the countries in the region in a heterogeneous way. Since the first edition in 1993 of the TOP500 list of most powerful supercomputing systems in the world, only Mexico and Brazil (with 18 appearances each) made the list with research-oriented supercomputers.