The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Spanish: Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) is a public research center located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It hosts MareNostrum, a 13.7 Petaflops, Intel Xeon Platinum-based supercomputer, which also includes clusters of emerging technologies. In June 2017[update], it ranked 13th in the world. As of November 2022[update], it dropped to 88th. It is expected to host one of Europe's first quantum computers.

Location and management

The Center is located in a former chapel named Torre Girona, at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), and was established on April 1, 2005. It is managed by a consortium composed of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (60%), the Government of Catalonia (30%) and the UPC (10%). Professor Mateo Valero is its main administrator. The MareNostrum supercomputer is contained inside an enormous glass box in a former chapel.

Budget

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center had an initial operational budget of €5.5 million/year (about US$7 million/year) to cover the period of 2005–2011. The center has had a very rapid growth and in 2018 had a workforce of around 600 workers and an annual global budget of more than 34 million euros.

The Center has contributed to the development of the IBM cell microprocessor architecture.

  • MareNostrum 4 supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (2017)
  • MareNostrum 4 supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (2017)

Staff

  • Director: Mateo Valero
  • Associate director: Josep Maria Martorell[citation needed]
  • Computer Sciences director: Jesús Labarta
  • Computer Sciences associate director: Eduard Ayguadé
  • Life Sciences director: Alfonso Valencia
  • Earth Sciences director:
  • Computer Applications for Science and Engineering director: José María Cela
  • Operations director: Sergi Girona[citation needed]

In popular culture

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center appears in Dan Brown's 2017 science fiction mystery thriller novel Origin, as the home of the E-Wave device.

Notes

External links