Barcelona Supercomputing Center acquired MareNostrum 3 in 2012. On 17 March 2017 it was switched off, after being providing resources to Spanish and European researchers for almost five years. To extend the use of this supercomputer, MareNostrum 3 racks will be distributed among several RES nodes (CesViMa-UPM, Universitat de València, Instituto de AstrofÃsica de Canarias, IFCA-UC, CénitS-Computaex and Universdiad de Málaga), where they will be available for RES users. In addition, BSC will keep some racks in production for its researchers.
The updated MareNostrum will be twelve times more powerful than its predecessor. It will be located in Torre Girona building (old chapel) and it will start working by July 2017. The new supercomputer MareNostrum 4 will offer to RES users about 60 million CPU hours per quarter. The purchase contract was awarded to IBM, following a public tender process, and has a value of almost €30 million. IBM integrates in one sole machine its own technologies alongside those of Lenovo, Intel and Fujitsu.
The new machine will have a performance capacity of 13,7 Petaflop/s. It will have two distinct parts: a general-purpose element with 3,400 nodes and 11 Petaflops/s, and a second element composed of clusters of three different emerging technologies. This new supercomputer will consume only 30% more power than MareNostrum 3, so it will have a greater energy efficiency. For further information about the technical characteristics of MareNostrum 3, visit BSC website.
