Barcelona Supercomputing Center

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is Spain’s leading supercomputing centre. It manages MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe and the most powerful in Spain.

In 2004, the Spanish Ministry of Education; the Catalan government, the Generalitat de Catalunya; and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia launched the initiative to create a National Supercomputing Centre in Barcelona. Since its creation in 2005, the BSC-CNS has played an active role in developing HPC (high performance computing) in Spain and the rest of Europe. The centre provides international scientists with supercomputing infrastructures and services and also disseminates knowledge and technology to society.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center has a multidisciplinary team made up of R&D experts and professionals who cover four major areas of research: computing science, life sciences, earth sciences, applied computational science and engineering.

MareNostrum is the generic name the BSC-CNS uses to refer to the different incarnations of the computer. Five versions have been installed to date. The BSC-CNS is also home to the supercomputers, MinoTauro and StarLife. The latter provides a computing infrastructure for medical projects.

You can go on an in-person or virtual tour of the MareNostrum supercomputer, which is housed in the former chapel of the Girona villa. The MareNostrum 5 occupies two floors of the BSC headquarters, covering an area of 800 square metres.