The National Supercomputing Center (BSC) of Barcelona will receive an amount of almost 100 million euros from the European Union, with the aim of developing and opening one of its supercomputers, the MareNostrum 5, to companies and institutions to research and apply artificial intelligence solutions. This was announced this Tuesday by the Minister of Digital Transformation, Óscar López, explaining that Barcelona will become one of the 7 AI nerve centers that the European Union is financing to boost the technological capacity of the continent.
The EU will finance half of the amount invested in this computer, so that around 98.33 million will come from the supranational entity. The Spanish Government will provide some 62 million euros, the Generalitat of Catalonia another 14 million, and another 28 million euros will come from Portugal, Turkey and Romania. These three countries will also participate in the investment because the EU has designed this development pole plan so that other European countries that do not have one of these supercomputers can get on the investment bandwagon in another country.
With all this investment, the BSC should be able to improve the training of this computer to provide resources to companies, startups or public institutions both in Spain and in the other three countries mentioned, so that it serves as an engine of technological and business development. It should also serve to host databases with which to train AI models, host software libraries and offer technical support for these AI-based solutions.
As indicated by the minister, the creation of a training program, startup accelerators and sector nodes with which to facilitate the adoption of artificial intelligence in various sectors, such as the financial, health and public sectors, will also be part of the project.
The MareNostrum 5 supercomputer is one of the most powerful in Europe with a capacity greater than 314PFlop/s. More than 650 R&D experts and professionals work at the BSC focused on four research areas: computer sciences, life sciences, earth sciences, and computing applications in science and engineering.
This computer came into operation in 2023 and also had European funding for its creation, representing the largest investment that Europe has made in a scientific infrastructure in Spain with a total cost of 202 million euros. «The BSC is a center of excellence in the new knowledge economy that will generate hundreds of jobs directly and thousands indirectly; and it will train the professionals of today and tomorrow,” said the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Innovation for the European Union
These seven EU supercomputers will provide technological coverage to 15 Member States and two States that are part of the European Supercomputing Network. Spanish polo will also include Portugal, Romania and Türkiye. On the other hand, Austria, Slovenia join Italy’s supercomputer, and Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Norway and Poland join the Finnish center.
With this project, the EU not only aims to improve the competitiveness of its companies, but also to lead an alternative path for artificial intelligence in which it is used respecting privacy and promoting technological independence from North American big tech.
