EuroHPC JUthe Joint European High Performance Computing Initiative, has signed a contract with Telefónica and Fujitsu’s HPC and AI division, Fsas Technologies, to expand and update the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer of Barcelona, which is housed in the facilities of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Both companies will lead the consortium of companies in charge of modernization tasks that, among other things, will serve to prepare the team for the future of AI.
The installation project of the new components of Mare Nostum 5 will be carried out throughout the first half of this year 2026. During this period the system will have the installation of two new partitions. One of them will be dedicated to training large language models (LLM) and another to inference. Both will be supported by next-generation GPUs, high-speed interconnects and more data storage capacity, with a new high-performance file system designed for AI.
The updates planned to expand the MareNostrum 5 include technology from Supermicro and Nvidia for computing power, as well as IBM and Vast for storage. The project will cost around 1.29 million euros, and the financing will be provided equally by EuroHPC and the governments of Spain, Portugal and Türkiye.
In addition to the latest generation GPUs mentioned, The renewal of MareNostrum 5 will provide this team with hardware designed for deep learning, natural language processing and complex simulation tasksas well as high-speed interconnects for fast data movement, large data storage capacity, and energy-efficient cooling technologies to support intensive AI research and development.
Once updated, the system, which will be designed above all to offer services to startups and SMEs dedicated to research and innovation, will also be available to the research community in general. Those in charge of allocating the resources will be EuroHPC JU and the NSC AI Factury Consortium. They will do it jointly and depending on their level of investment.
