The Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES)
The RES is an alliance of 12 organizations and its supercomputers distributed throughout the Spanish geography which work together and offer since 2006 a High Performance Computing service to the scientific community. The RES is a distributed Singular Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS), and it is coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
Currently the Spanish Supercomputing Network consists of:
MareNostrum and MinoTauro at the
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)
LaPalma at the
Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands (IAC)
Altamira at the
Physics Institute of Cantabria (IFCA) of the University of Cantabria (UC)
Picasso at the
University of Malaga (UMA)
Tirant at the
University of Valencia (UV)
Caesaraugusta at the
Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI) at the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR)
Caléndula at the
Fundación Centro de Supercomputación de Castilla y León (FCSCL)
Pirineus at the
Consorci de Serveis Universitari de Catalunya (CSUC)
Lusitania at the
CénitS-COMPUTAEX
Cibeles at the
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UMA)
Urederra at the
Navarra de Servicios y Tecnologías, S.A.U (NASERTIC)
The nodes provide to RES users a percentage of their total computational power. The total computational power is up to 13 PFLOP/s.
The RES Council is the main governing body of the Spanish Supercomputing Network and it is composed of one representative of each institution. The Spanish State Secretary of Research, Development and Innovation nominates the Council President, and the vice-President is the BSC Council representative. The RES Council decides on, among others, the nomination of RES manager, approval of annual work plan and associated budget, inclusion/exclusion of nodes, approval of RES strategic plan, approval of annual report, approval of Access Committee working rules, and approval of minimal technical requirements for the supercomputers included in RES.
Access Committee
This computing power is available to public research, based on activity calls. Activity call is continuously open and the evaluation is every four months. The duration for activities is limited to 4 months; larger activities should divide the work in 4 month-periods.
The Access Committee evaluates the received activities. It is constituted by four members:
- a BSC-CNS external manager with wide experience in Innovation Management
- an AEI representative
- a Supercomputing expert, external to BSC-CNS
- a Supercomputing expert, member of BSC-CNS
The Access Committee is advised by an Experts Panel composed of prestigious Spanish scientists, external to BSC-CNS. This Experts Panel is divided into six groups, according to the established classification from the Spanish Foundation of Science and Technology (FECYT – Fundación Española de Ciencia y Tecnología):
- Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences
- Life and Health Sciences
- Physics
- Engineering and Mathematics
- Heterogeneous Chemistry and Solids*
- Homogeneous Chemistry*
The Experts Panel is composed of scientists of outstanding career and experience in the management of research projects, mainly managers of National Programs or from the AEI (Agencia Española de Investigación).
You can get more information about the access to RES supercomputing resources in the RES website.
* Subareas in the field of Chemistry:
Homogeneous Chemistry:
- Biological systems
- Chemistry in solution
- Organometallics
- Homogeneous catalysis
- Astrochemistry
Heterogeneous Chemistry and Solids:
- Theoretical chemistry
- Heterogeneous catalysis
- Surfaces and interfaces
- Properties of 3D solids
- Properties of 2D and 1D solids
Current Activities
The research activities which are currently using the RES resources are classified into six areas: