BP BP Plc

By Dieter Holger

BP PLC said Thursday that it has provided access to its supercomputer to the U.S. government, universities and technology companies to help researchers tackling the spreading coronavirus.

The British energy company said its supercomputer in Houston, Texas, and scientists in San Diego, Calif., would aid the public-private Covid-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, a coalition that includes International Business Machines Corp., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

BP said its supercomputer can "process more than 16 million billion calculations per second and complete a problem in an hour that would take a laptop nine years."

Covid-19 researchers can submit proposals online to receive computing help.

"The world is rallying together in response to this pandemic and our biosciences experts, computer scientists and mathematicians are proud to play their part by supporting groundbreaking and potentially life-saving research," said David Eyton, executive vice president of innovation and engineering at BP.

Write to Dieter Holger at dieter.holger@wsj.com; @dieterholger

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 16, 2020 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

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