Barcelona Supercomputing Center

Early in 2004 the Ministry of Education and Science (Spanish Government), Generalitat de Catalunya (local Catalan Government) and Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) took the initiative of creating a National Supercomputing Center in Barcelona. BSC-CNS (Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) is the National Supercomputing Facility in Spain and was officially constituted in April 2005. BSC-CNS manages MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, located at the Torre Girona chapel. The mission of BSC-CNS is to investigate, develop and manage information technology in order to facilitate scientific progress. With this aim, special dedication has been taken to areas such as Computer Sciences, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences and Computational Applications in Science and Engineering.

All these activities are complementary to each other and very tightly related. In this way, a multidisciplinary loop is set up: our exposure to industrial and non-computer science academic practices improves our understanding of the needs and helps us focusing our basic research towards improving those practices. The result is very positive both for our research work as well as for improving the way we service our society.