The Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Noel Tracey, launched a £1 million (€1.27 million) supercomputer facility at the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering in NUI, Galway this week.

The 40-processor Silicon Graphics origin 3800 supercomputer will perform calculations with a peak performance of 40 billion calculations per second.

The supercomputer, which is the second-most powerful in the Republic, will help to design better medical instruments and help improve understanding of the chemical behaviour of drugs.