The Barcelona Supercomputing Center, candidate to host one of the most powerful supercomputers in the EU by 2021

• Apart from Barcelona’s candidacy, Finland and Italy are also on the bid and the decision is expected to be announced on June 7th.
• The supercomputers must have a peak speed of at least 200 petaflops/s and be operational by the fourth quarter of 2020.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has announced its candidacy to host one of the at least two most powerful pre-exascale supercomputers that will be operational in the European Union by 2021 with a 50% EU funding. Apart from Barcelona, the other two candidates are Finland and Italy.

The project is carried out by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, the body created by the European Commission and the 28 member countries to co-finance a European Roadmap for High Performance Computing (HPC), in order to promote the development of European HPC technologies. It is the first time that the EU co-finances supercomputer infrastructures and the decision regarding the entities selected to host the pre-exascale supercomputers is expected to be announced on June 7th.

On a technical level, the supercomputers must have a peak speed of at least 200 petaflops/s, meet the needs of a wide range of applications and be in operation by the fourth quarter of 2020. The decision also has to do with the experience of the candidates to install and operate similar systems and the quality of the service to users, among others.

If Barcelona’s candidacy succeeds, the supercomputer will be placed in MareNostrum 5, a large space distributed between the Torre Girona chapel and the site that is being built in the new corporative building of the BSC, both connected by different tunnels.