The Deucalion and MareNostrum 5 supercomputers, funded by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), have recently contributed to a significant advance in advanced computing, with both entering the production phase. This stage has led to the realization of various projects under the 4th Computing Projects Calls. The call for applications, carried out by FCCN, FCT's digital services, closed at the end of May.
Deucalion: the Portuguese supercomputer is already in production
Deucalion is on! Portugal's largest supercomputer is an admirable infrastructure: it has 1900 meters of optical fiber, 2359 high-speed interconnection cables and 26 racks, which house unprecedented processing power. With a peak performance of 10 petaflops, thanks to its two clusters with three partitions, Deucalion is now accessible to boost the development of research, technology and innovation projects.
This machine offers indispensable resources for extremely complex calculations and advanced simulations, allowing national research projects to achieve their goals more quickly and effectively.
The first projects
Among the first 15 national projects in Deucalion, approved in the 4th edition of the competition, are topics from a wide variety of scientific areas, ranging from the optimization of vehicles of the future, to the study of gravitational waves in astronomy, to the analysis of molecules involved in neurological diseases.
There are more than 136 million CPU core.hours and 115,000 GPU hours of high-performance computing dedicated to advancing national science and innovation.
MareNostrum 5: Portuguese participation in a European supercomputer
MareNostrum 5, located in Spain, is also available for national projects.
Portugal has access to 5% of the capacity of this infrastructure, 45% of which is shared between Spain and Turkey. The remaining 50% is earmarked for tenders managed by the European supercomputing initiative EuroHPC JU.
The collaboration between Portuguese institutions and this European supercomputer reflects a joint effort to strengthen Portugal's scientific and technological capacity.
MareNostrum 5, with its immense processing capacity and acceleration, is now available for use in high-impact advanced computing projects. Access to the pre-production phase is published in: Expressions of Interest - FCT.
So far, the first 11 national users with previous experience have been sent to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, pioneering the testing and optimization of their projects in the 2 largest partitions of MareNostrum 5.
Opportunities through EuroHPC JU
Both supercomputers, Deucalion and MareNostrum 5, are accessible in the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) tenders, opening up new possibilities for Portuguese researchers and institutions and giving them access to a new design that enriches the diverse and complementary set of computing architectures already available in EuroHPC systems.
Computer resources for research and innovation
FCT's Advanced Computing Project competitions aim to help increase the national and international competitiveness of science and technology by supporting innovation and knowledge transfer. Access to Deucalion and MareNostrum 5 is available in various forms, from Experimental Access for beginners to Larger Access for projects that require more time and large amounts of computing resources.
With Deucalion joining the list of the 500 most efficient supercomputers in the world, Portugal has solidified its position on the global stage of advanced computing, providing its scientists and innovators with the tools they need to tackle large-scale scientific and technological challenges.
For more information on how to participate and take advantage of these resources, interested parties can go to:
