BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER CENTRO NACIONAL DE SUPERCOMPUTACION

Their core work

BSC is Spain's national supercomputing facility and one of Europe's leading HPC research centres, operating the MareNostrum supercomputer. They develop parallel programming models, optimize scientific applications for extreme-scale computing, and provide computational resources to researchers across disciplines — from climate simulation and genomics to materials science and engineering. Beyond infrastructure, BSC conducts deep research in computer architecture, performance optimization, and increasingly in AI and deep learning applied to scientific problems.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In 2014–2018, BSC focused heavily on building European HPC infrastructure — PRACE partnerships, roadmapping the European HPC strategy, and pushing toward exascale hardware through projects like Mont-Blanc and ExaNoDe. From 2019 onward, the centre shifted decisively toward applying that computational power: AI, deep learning, co-design of applications, and energy-efficient computing became dominant themes. The emergence of safety and security keywords in the later period also signals expansion into trustworthy computing and critical infrastructure applications.

BSC is transitioning from building supercomputers to making them intelligent — expect future work at the intersection of exascale computing, AI, and domain-specific scientific applications.

How they like to work

BSC operates as both a consortium leader (49 coordinated projects, ~24% of their portfolio) and a highly sought-after partner (138 as participant). With 1,768 unique consortium partners across 75 countries, they function as a major European hub — one of the most connected research organisations in H2020. Their massive network and dual coordinator/participant profile make them an accessible but competitive partner: they bring infrastructure, expertise, and connections, but they also have the scale to be selective.

BSC has collaborated with 1,768 unique partners across 75 countries, making it one of the most networked research centres in H2020. Their reach is truly global, though the densest connections are within European HPC, climate, and life sciences research communities.

What sets them apart

BSC combines national supercomputing infrastructure with world-class research teams in computer science, earth sciences, and life sciences — a rare combination that lets them both provide computational power and advance the science that uses it. Their 201-project H2020 portfolio and EUR 108M in funding place them in the top tier of European research centres by scale. For consortium builders, BSC offers a triple advantage: compute resources, domain expertise across multiple scientific fields, and one of the largest collaboration networks in European research.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Hi-EST
  Coordinated by BSC with EUR 1.47M funding, focused on integrating emerging supercomputing technologies — represents their core mission of pushing HPC boundaries.
• Mont-Blanc 3
  EUR 1.3M contribution to the flagship European effort to build energy-efficient exascale processors from low-power embedded technology — a defining project for European HPC sovereignty.
• ELIXIR-EXCELERATE
  EUR 558K participation in Europe's life science data infrastructure, demonstrating BSC's expansion beyond traditional HPC into bioinformatics and genomics at scale.