2023-12-21 13:04:50
The best supercomputer in Spain, the third in Europe and the eighth in the entire world. These are the credentials of MareNostrum 5, the new ‘beast’ of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) and it just opened this Thursday. With its 314 petaflops, it is capable of performing up to 314,000 billion calculations per second, something that would be equivalent to the power of almost 400,000 of our laptops. Or simplifying even further: MareNostrum 5 is capable of doing in one hour a task that would take our computer 46 years. Figures that, certainly, can make you dizzy, but according to those responsible, they place this Spanish center in the same computing ecosystem that the US and China currently lead, and from which the foundations of the future will be devised in our present.
Because thanks to its capabilities, MareNostrum 5 will be crucial in the development of ‘Destination Earth‘, a project in which a digital twin of our planet will be created, the first of its kind, with which it will be possible to interact to predict, for example, the future of the climate by altering components such as carbon dioxide (and see what happens if they continue to increase emissions into the atmosphere) or raise the temperature of the oceans (and observe how this affects the currents). In short, create a world in which our different futures can be glimpsed with a precision never seen before.
It will not be the only task of this new supercomputer. In addition, it will try to make human replicas in which to test new medications, vaccine development and virus propagation simulations. In the same way, much more complex problems of artificial intelligence and analysis of large volumes of data can be addressed. Thus, for example, it will be possible to generate massive language models, similar to the famous ChatGPT, by training much larger neural networks with hundreds of billions of parameters, using data sets infinitely larger than the current ones.
On the other hand, materials science and engineering can also benefit in areas such as aircraft design and optimization based on simulation and data management to achieve safer, cleaner and more efficient aviation. Likewise, the new European supercomputer will serve to advance in the simulation of generation processes of new forms of energy such as nuclear fusion.
The MareNostrum leaves its chapel
“All of these are great challenges and we need computers as powerful as this one to be able to face them,” said Mateo Valero, director of the BSC and ideologist of the facilities, which has already been home to four supercomputers that have put them at the forefront at a press conference. the Catalan center. Because MareNostrum 5 retires its predecessor, MareNostrum 4, which it surpasses in power twenty times.
The MareNostrum 4 seen in a view from the second floor of the pep dalmau chapel
Also in size: while the previous models were located in the famous Torre Girona chapel, between the stained glass windows and imitation Romanesque arches that the Girona family had built in the 19th century, MareNostrum 5 is installed in a larger neighboring building, occupying an area of 800 square meters, similar to the space that three tennis courts would have in parallel.
A partial inauguration
However, this Thursday the entire MareNostrum 5 will not launch, but only one of its halves. Because this supercomputer has, on the one hand, a general-purpose partition, dedicated to classical computing; and, on the other, an accelerated partition, “designed to expand the frontiers of knowledge in artificial intelligence,” Sergi Girona, Director of Operations, also explained in a press conference, who explained that this part will come into operation at the end of next year.
This part, intended more for experimental computing, occupies 19th place in the ranking of the most advanced supercomputers in the world, which will make the BSC the only center to house two ‘monsters’ on the list.
Quantum computing, on the starting blocks
But although supercomputers can help us explore the possibilities of our future, it will be quantum computing, capable of performing tasks in a matter of seconds when the ‘classical’ ones would take millions of years, that will make the qualitative leap that will rewrite what we know. of computers. And although it is still a technology ‘in its infancy’ that physicists are still trying to ‘domesticate’, at the BSC they will implement two new computers of this type with two different architectures.
On the one hand, in the coming months the first computer of this type will be integrated into the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES), which is part of the Quantum Spain initiative, promoted by the Ministry of Digital Transformation through the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA); and, on the other, one of the first European quantum computers, after the EuroHPC JU selected the BSC as one of the six centers that will host the first European quantum computing network. Both quantum computers will be among the first to come into operation in southern Europe.
In addition, all these facilities can continue to be visited by anyone who wishes. “We are very proud that about 20,000 people from all over the world come to meet us each year,” said Valero. Of them, about 6,000 are primary schoolchildren and about 7,000 are secondary schoolchildren. We need young talent for the new supercomputers of the future. In fact, we are already thinking about MareNostrum 6.
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