Academic Supercomputing in Europe

Spain

Statistics

Population: 40.3 million
GDP/capita: € 19,100

Policy

There is no specific national HPC policy. Some HPC and networking activities are embedded in the programmes of the National Plan for Research and Development which is managed by the Scientific Research Council (CSIC).
In March 2004 the Ministry of Science and Technology provided € 70 million funding for a 40 Tflop/s IBM system to be installed in Barcelona. This national facility, named Mare Nostrum, is used for e-Science and is accessible to the scientific community through review of projects and programs by a scientific council.

Supercomputing facilities for the academia

BSC: IBM cluster (4812 PowerPC970/2200)
CEPBA: IBM pSeries 630/36, IBM SP Power3/128, Bull 5160 (8 Itanium2/1500), SGI Origin2000/64, Compaq Alphaserver/16, Compaq Alphaserver/12
CESCA: SGI Altix 3700/96, Compaq Alphaserver/32, HP GS1280/16, HP V2500/16, HP N4000/8
CESGA: HP SuperDome/128, HP HPC320/32, Dell cluster (80 P4/3200)
CIEMAT: SGI Origin 3800/128, SGI Altix 3700/96, Dell cluster (18 Xeon/2400 + 48 Xeon/3200)
CTTC: Beowulf cluster (48 Athlon/800)
IFCA: IBM cluster (180 Xeon/3200), IBM OpenPower 720/12, Beowulf cluster (160 PIII/1260)
INEM: SUN HPC 10000/52
INM: Cray X1E/124, Cray X1/40
ITER: Beowulf cluster (288 Athlon/1650)
Polytechnical University of Valencia: SGI Altix 3700/48, IBM cluster (120 Xeon/3060)
UCLM (Ciudad Real): Beowulf cluster (12 P4/2600), Beowulf cluster (12 P4/2800)
University of Balears: Beowulf cluster (17 P4/3000 + 19 P4/2800)
University of Barcelona: Sun FireCluster/152
University of Lleida: Beowulf cluster (28 P4/2400)
University of Valencia: SGI Altix 3700/100
University of Sevilla: Beowulf cluster (38 P4/1700), Beowulf cluster (26 P4/2400)
UPM: IBM cluster (248 PowerPC970/2200)

The figure shows for the past 5 years the peak performance of the #1 Spanish system and the total performance of all Spanish HPC systems.

Acquisition and upgrade plans

The Sun at the University of Barcelona will be upgraded to a system with 196 processors.
UCLM (Toledo): Bull NovaScale 6320/32 ordered

National academic network

RedIRIS is the National Research and Academic Network (organisation). It is financed through the national R&D plan, has in 2005 a budget of € 15 million and provides services to 260 universities and research centres in Spain. RedIRIS is managed by CSIC.

The 2.5 Gbps backbone of RedIRIS2 connects in a mesh topology 18 nodes, one in each autonomous region of Spain. RedIris has a 10 Gbps link to GÉANT.

http://www.rediris.es/

National GRIDs

CESCA and CESGA have create a grid infrastructure by linking their HP HPC320 systems.

UPV is creating an interdepartmental grid that will integrate a SGI Altix 3000/48, a Beowulf cluster/128 and about 3000 computers at several UPV departments.

List of abbreviations

BSC Barcelona Supercomputing Center
CEPBA Centro Europeo de Paralelismo de Barcelona
CESCA Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya, Barcelona
CESGA Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela
CIEMAT Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Technológicas, Madrid
CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (National Council for Scientific Research)
CTTC Centre Technologic de Transferencia de Calor, Terrassa
IFCA Instituto de Física de Cantabria, University of Cantabria, Santander
INEM Instituto Nacional de Empleo, Madrid
INM Instituto Nacional de Meteorología, Madrid
ITER Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Reno-vables, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
UCLM University of Castilla La Mancha
UPM Universidad Politechnica de Madrid

Contacts and Addresses

Oriol Ferran
President CESCA-CEPBA
Gran Capita, 2-4 (Edifici Nexus)
E-08034 Barcelona

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