Meet Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)

We had a chat with Fabrizio Gagliardi, Senior Strategy Advisor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), with whom INESC TEC has collaborated on several international projects in recent years in the field of high-performance computing.

What is the connection between BSC and INESC TEC? What are the main results of this collaboration? 

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and INESC TEC have worked on several initiatives to foster international cooperation in High-Performance Computing (HPC). As one example, we have recently concluded our joint work on the European Coordination and Support Action RISC2, where partners from the EU and Latin America joined efforts to boost collaboration in HPC. Together, we have organised workshops, training events, and policy-focused dialogues to raise awareness about the EU-LATAM collaboration’s potential and strengthen the links between the HPC communities in both regions.

How do you rate your experience with INESC TEC? What do you value most in this collaboration? 

The experience of having INESC TEC as a partner has proven to be very successful. INESC TEC’s expertise in communication, dissemination, and networking capabilities has been especially valuable in the initiatives we shared. Over the years, BSC and INESC TEC have built an extensive network of contacts with the HPC communities in several regions, from Latin America to Japan, and from North America to the Mediterranean countries. In the future, we expect to keep joining forces to drive forward international endeavours in HPC. 

Recently, INESC TEC and BSC are jointly on the HANAMI project. How can this project foster collaboration in the HPC field between Europe and Japan?  

The HANAMI project stems from the broader EU-Japan Digital Partnership. This three-year-long project will support the European side of the collaboration with Japanese research centres. The aim is to develop and optimise applications in HPC in three target domains that are especially important for the EU and Japan: material science, climate modelling, and biomedical research. HANAMI will support the ongoing collaboration between research teams and foster the establishment of new joint initiatives through capacity-building efforts, the involvement of relevant stakeholders from both regions and the development of a sustainability roadmap.

What can we expect from BSC in the upcoming years? 

BSC will continue to work towards fostering international scientific cooperation with its established partners in Europe, such as INESC TEC, and institutions from other regions like the US, Japan, Latin America, the ASEAN region and the South Mediterranean countries. In this sense, both BSC and INESC TEC contribute to relevant international initiatives. One of them is the Trillion Parameters Consortium. This bottom-up organisation gathers groups interested in building, training, and using large-scale AI models with those building and operating HPC systems.