The MareNostrum 4 has provided 1,173 million processor hours during 2019. 80% of these hours (938 million) have been used by researchers who have gained access to the supercomputer through the European infrastructure network PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) or the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES). The computing hours granted to PRACE and the RES are valued at 8.5 million euros.
Access to the supercomputer through the RES and PRACE networks is decided through scientific committees outside the BSC that assess the quality of the proposals made by researchers from different scientific disciplines. PRACE has given access to MareNostrum 4 to 14 major projects and RES, to 285 activities.
Of the large projects that have run in MareNostrum 4 through PRACE, 11.4% are projects in the field of Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences; 11.92%, of Biomedicine and Life Sciences; 33.25%, of Physics, 20.17% of Engineering and Mathematics, and 23.17% of Chemistry and Materials.
In the case of the RES, the distribution has been: Astronomy, Space and Earth Sciences, 18.75%; Biomedicine and Life Sciences, 12.61%; Physical, 35.57%; Engineering and Mathematics, 14.3%, and Chemistry and Materials, 18.78%.
This distribution by scientific disciplines depends on how PRACE and the RES distribute the projects by the supercomputers that are part of each of the networks.
Processor hours is the way in which the calculation power that a particular project uses to carry out a certain task is calculated.
Supercomputers are machines that are characterized by being much more powerful than conventional computers based on getting a large number of processors to work together.
The main block of MareNostrum 4 consists of 48 racks and a total of 3,456 nodes. Each node has two Intel Xeon Platinum chips, with 24 processors each, which means a total of 165,888 processors.