Inauguration of MareNostrum 5: Europe welcomes a new world-class supercomputer

Rafal Duczmal, the chair of the EuroHPC JU Governing Board, Anders Jensen, the EuroHPC JU’s Executive Director and Roberto Viola, Director General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission (CNECT) also attended the event.

MareNostrum 5 is a pre-exascale supercomputer based on the Bull Sequana XH3000 solution supplied by Eviden and Lenovo ThinkSystem architectures with a peak performance of 314 Petaflops, or 314 million billion calculations per second.  The system is hosted and operated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).  

In November 2023, MareNostrum 5 has entered the Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world at 8th place. MareNostrum 5 is not only highly powerful but also one of the greenest supercomputers in Europe and the 6th greenest supercomputer in the world, according to the latest Green500 list. While using state of the art energy-efficient HPC technologies, the system will also be fully powered with sustainable energy and water cooled, as all EuroHPC supercomputers. Moreover the heat it will generate will be used to heat the building where it is located.

MareNostrum 5 also distinguishes itself by its unique architecture. It combines a powerful general-purpose partition, operating without any accelerators and dedicated to classical computing and an accelerated partition, designed to push the frontiers of knowledge in artificial intelligence.

Designed with a particular focus on enhancing European medical research, MareNostrum 5 is poised to strengthen research in drug and vaccine development, virus spread simulations, Artificial Intelligence, and big data processing applications. The machine will also support traditional HPC applications, such as climate research, engineering, material science and earth sciences.

As one of the world's most powerful supercomputers, MareNostrum 5 provides an ideal environment for cutting-edge research and is set to propel European research and industry forward.

Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, said

"I am delighted to see MareNostrum 5 inaugurated and ready to serve European research in the new year. This day marks another major achievement for European supercomputing, and for us at the EuroHPC JU, represents the end of our first chapter of procuring European supercomputers. All eight machines in the first generation of EuroHPC systems are now out in the world, and ready for access by European researchers to push the boundaries of scientific and technological innovation.”   

Mateo Valero, BSC Director, said:

"Supercomputers are instruments at the service of science and engineering, accelerators of theory that allow the development of digital twins in very diverse and essential fields for society, such as climate change or precision medicine.

We are very proud of the arrival of the new MareNostrum 5, one of the most important machines in Europe and the world to advance in the great challenges of science, such as the digital twin of the Earth, which we seek to develop as part of the Destination Earth project, one of Europe's great bets to combat climate change; or human digital twins, which will serve to create more efficient drugs to treat diseases that are difficult to treat today, among others.

The presentation of MareNostrum 5 paves the way for the next MareNostrum 6, which we hope will incorporate European technology, a milestone that could be a reality in 5- or 6-years’ time." 

More details

Mare Nostrum 5 is owned by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and run by a Spanish-lead consortium also including Portugal and Turkey.  

The supercomputer is co-funded with a total budget of around EUR 151 million by the EuroHPC JU and the Mare Nostrum 5 consortium.  

European scientists and users from the public sector and industry will be able to access this new system as of early next year through the different access calls offered and managed by the EuroHPC JU.

Relevant links

• New world-class European supercomputer inaugurated in Spain, press release from the European Commission

• European supercomputer MareNostrum 5 starts up at BSC, press release from BSC

Background

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a legal and funding entity created in 2018 to enable the European Union and EuroHPC participating countries to coordinate their efforts and pool their resources with the objective of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing. The mission of the EuroHPC JU is:

• to develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the EU a federated, secure hyperconnected supercomputing, quantum computing, service and data infrastructure ecosystem;
• to support the development and uptake of demand-oriented and user-driven innovative and competitive supercomputing and quantum computing systems based on a supply chain that will ensure the availability of components, technologies and knowledge;
• and, to widen the use of that supercomputing and quantum computing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users.

In order to equip Europe with a world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured nine supercomputers, located across Europe. Three of these EuroHPC supercomputers are now ranked among the world’s top 10 most powerful supercomputers: LUMI in Finland, Leonardo in Italy and MareNostrum 5 in Spain.

No matter where in Europe they are located, European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from these EuroHPC supercomputers, which rank among the world’s most powerful. 

In parallel, the EuroHPC JU is developing a leading European quantum computing infrastructure. In June 2023, the EuroHPC JU signed hosting agreements with six sites across Europe to host and operate EuroHPC quantum computers: BSC in Spain will be one of these hosting entities.