Barcelona will welcome one of three European supercomputers, to be in the top 5 in the world, alongside Italy and Finland, the European Commission has announced. The European High-Perfomance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC), with a budget of 840 million euros (£750 million; $950 million), has chosen eight member states for new supercomputers. After the three countries already mentioned, slightly less powerful machines will go to Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal and Slovenia.
Barcelona's machine will be capable of executing more than 150 Petaflops, that is 150 million billion calculations per second, putting it among the fastest five in the world. The funding for the centre in Barcelona, 100 million euros, will be the largest EU investment in research infrastructure in Spain.
The best of the new systems are expected to provide 4-5 times more computing power than the current top supercomputing systems of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). The project as a whole should double Europe's supercomputing capacity. MareNostrum 5, Barcelona's machine, is planned to come into operation on 31st December 2020.
The Commission says that "high-performance computing capabilities are crucial in generating growth and jobs but also for strategic autonomy and innovation in any field". Planned applications for the technology include development of personalised medicine, weather forecasting and climate change modelling, simulations to test designs in the automotive and aviation industries, cybersecurity and the design of new energy solutions.
El Barcelona Super Computing Center (@BSC_CNS) serà la seu del superordinador pre-exascala de la xarxa de supercomputadors d’alta capacitat. Una inversió de 100 milions d’euros al MareNostrum 5 que posa Catalunya al capdavant de la supercomputació a Europa pic.twitter.com/aKxLFlAWV1
— Quim Torra i Pla (@QuimTorraiPla) 7 de juny de 2019
Translation: The Barcelona Super Computing Center will be home to [one of] the pre-exascale supercomputers of the network of high-performance supercomputers. An investment of 100 million euros in MareNostrum 5 which puts Catalonia at the forefront of supercomputing in Europe.