The Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth of the European Union, Mariya Gabriel, visited yesterday the facilities of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), together with the Spanish Minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant, the president of the Catalan Government, Pere Aragonès and the Associate Director of BSC Josep Maria Martorell.
The delegation of the visit has been completed by Raquel Yotti, General Secretary of Research of the Ministry of Science and Innovation; Gemma Geis, Catalan Minister of Research and Universities; Victoria Alsina, Catalan Minister of Foreign Action and Open Government; Daniel Crespo, rector of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia; Laia Bonet, Deputy Mayor for 2030 Agenda, Digital Transition, Sport, Territorial and Metropolitan Coordination at the Barcelona City Council; and Sergi Girona, Director of Operations of BSC.
During the visit, the commissioner visited the chapel where the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer is housed, as well as the facilities that will house the future MareNostrum5, which will come into operation in the coming months. MareNostrum 5 will be the most powerful supercomputer in Spain and one of the three most powerful in Europe, within the framework of the European supercomputing strategy (EuroHPC). This new tool will have a peak performance of more than 200 petaflops, almost 30 times higher than the current supercomputer, MareNostrum4, and 10,000 times higher than the first MareNostrum, which was installed in 2004.
The capabilities of the new supercomputer will allow frontier research projects to be promoted in areas as diverse as Astronomy, Materials, Computational Sciences, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences, as well as Computational Applications in Science and Engineering.
Furthermore, MareNostrum 5 will incorporate an experimental platform dedicated to developing new technologies for the future generation of supercomputers. In this way, BSC, in addition to offering top-level supercomputing services, will contribute with its research so that future generations of supercomputers can incorporate technologies entirely developed in Europe.
The European Commissioner highlighted the key role of this "strategic infrastructure" in driving innovation across Europe and in helping researchers find solutions to contemporary challenges.
BSC, third Spanish institution to raise H2020 funds
BSC is a public consortium formed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation provides 60% of its structural funding, which is completed with 30% from the Generalitat de Catalunya and 10% from the UPC.
With a research staff of 784 people, the BSC's lines of research are developed within the framework of European Union funding programs, Spanish and Catalan public calls for research, and collaborations with leading companies.
BSC has been the third Spanish institution to receive funding from the European research program Horizon 2020, with more than 108 million obtained in this period, being the leader in Spain in ICT programs (Information and Communication Technologies) and infrastructures scientific.