A new supercomputer is to be installed at the premises of the GrowSmarter partner Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The BSC is one of just three institutions that will soon host a pre-exascale supercomputer within the European Union-promoted high-capacity supercomputer network.
The announcement came from the European Commission at a time, where the GrowSmarter consortium is already contributing to foster innovations from the Catalan capital. Many of the solutions developed within GrowSmarter already harness BSC’s computational know-how to build better services for the citizenship through the integration, standardization and universalization of data.
One example is the Big Data Open Platform (read more) developed by BSC and Cellnex, which integrates data from GrowSmarter solutions on mobility, energy, and integrated infrastructures to form one single access point for application developers. This provides a universal and accessible platform that allows developers to build uniform services for cities with minimal effort and no redesign, promoting equal access to public data and fostering sustainable and fair public development.
Finally, this open platform model is replicable for other cities and contexts, and serves as an example of how public-private cooperation based projects such as the GrowSmarter can contribute to generate integrated benefits for a better Europe.
Barcelona as a leader of innovation
In the GrowSmarter Lighthouse city of Barcelona, the new supercomputer will have a positive impact on science, research, industry, businesses and people’s quality of life.
MareNostrum 5 – the future supercomputer – will come into operation in December 2020 and support the processing of incredibly amounts of data and the development of new applications in a wide range of areas. One of those areas will be new smart city solutions.
The fact that the BSC is going to host a new supercomputer only highlights Barcelona’s role as one of Europe’s leading cities promoting a more technologically integrated and competitive region – and, as a result, a potentially more sustainable, socially and economically dynamic continent.
The new supercomputer will hopefully serve as another example of how public services and management can benefit from the technological developments and from tools and top equipment to build solutions towards a more dynamic and citizen-oriented Europe.
Contributing authors:
- Sergio García, Communications Coordinator, anteverti
- Alba Soler, Consultant, anteverti
