•Notícia

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is working to replace the MareNostrum supercomputer with a new version that will multiply its processing power by a factor of ten. The replacement work will continue until the beginning of 2013, but a part of the new computer (70% of the total) ranks 36th in the world and 12th in Europe according to the Top500 Supercomputer World Ranking which was updated on 12 November, on the occasion of the SC12 international supercomputing trade show held in Salt Lake City (Utah).

Funding for the project comes from state contributions made in 2010 through the current Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, in application of Supplementary Provision No 3 of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, and also includes the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and funds from the current consortium, provided by both the Catalan and the Spanish governments.

The BSC-CNS consortium is made up of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and the Catalan Ministry of Economy and Knowledge.


MareNostrum is a supercomputer produced by IBM using IDataPlex technology, which makes it possible to group the components of the new MareNostrum in a reduced space (120m2).

It will have more than 6,000 Intel SandyBridge chips running at 2.6 GHz each, with eight processors or cores, a total memory of almost 100 TB and a high-speed communication network between the processors ten times more powerful than the current one.

The supercomputer will be linked to a high-performance file system with a capacity of 2 petabytes and a 5-Pb active filing system. Its energy consumption will be one megawatt, only 28% higher than the current version of MareNostrum, but its processing power will be 10.63 times higher. The IDPX (IDataPlex) systems are cooled on a rack to further improve energy performance at the Torre Girona chapel where the supercomputer is installed.


By replacing the MareNostrum, the BSC-CNS will be able to offer a better service to its users and thus meet its commitments to contribute to PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) research infrastructure, which brings together the top supercomputing centres in Europe and leads development in this area on the continent. Spain is at the head of this European platform, together with France, Germany and Italy, the three other countries that make their supercomputers—all with a processing power of at least one petaflop per second—available to European scientists.

MareNostrum is the name given to the BSC-CNS flagship supercomputer. Its initial version, installed in 2004, had a processing power of 42.35 teraflops per second (42 billion operations per second). It was updated in 2006, and MareNostrum II was capable of 94.21 teraflops per second. MareNostrum III will have a processing power of over one petaflop per second (one thousand teraflops per second, or one billion operations per second).

It is a Unique Scientific and Technical Facility (ICTS in Spanish), recognised as such by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, that serves the scientific and technological community and society by providing open access for researchers in the public and private sectors.

Since 2004, MareNostrum has been used in over two thousand scientific and technical research projects. Today, supercomputers are one of the basic pillars supporting science and engineering. Without them, many research and other projects requiring a high calculation and data-processing capacity would simply not be possible. Supercomputers are used to create models and simulations and to process large amounts of information for studies in all fields of science.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación participated very actively at the SC12 International Supercomputing trade show which ran from 10 to 16 November in Salt Lake City (Utah).

Researchers from the Centre offered over a dozen activities (tutorials, workshops and BoFs) at the scientific conference (click here for details), with a special focus on OmpSs programming models created at the BSC-CNS, and research carried out on future exascale supercomputers.

The Centre’s stand also displayed several applications developed by the BSC-CNS to serve industry.


The BSC-CNS is a pioneering supercomputing centre in Spain that specialises in high-performance computing, known as HPC. Its purpose is twofold: to conduct R&D, and to make supercomputing facilities available to the scientific community and to society as a whole.

The BSC-CNS was awarded the “Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence” seal in 2011. It manages the Spanish Supercomputing Network (Red Española de Supercomputación, or RES) and is a first-level member of the PRACE infrastructure (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe).

The BSC-CNS consortium is made up of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (51%), the Catalan Ministry of Economy and Knowledge (37%), and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) (12%).