MareNostrum 5

MareNostrum 5 featured image

System Overview

  • Name: MareNostrum 5
  • Location: Spain
  • Owner: EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
  • Operator: Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputacion (BSC-CNS)
  • Released in: 2023
  • Primary focus area: AI/ML

Architecture and Performance

MareNostrum 5 is a pre-exascale EuroHPC supercomputer at BSC-CNS, supplied by Bull SAS. It combines Bull Sequana XH3000 and Lenovo ThinkSystem architectures, delivering 314 PFlops peak performance. The system features four partitions:

General Purpose (Intel Sapphire Rapids), 6,480 nodes, 45.9 PFlops peak
Accelerated (Intel Sapphire Rapids + Nvidia Hopper), 1,120 nodes with 4 GPUs each, 260 PFlops peak
Next-Gen General Purpose (Nvidia GRACE CPU)
Next-Gen Accelerated, details pending.

These partitions together meet diverse HPC user needs.

Achievements and Impact

In November 2023, MareNostrum 5 has entered the Top500 list of the most powerful supercomputers in the world at 8th place. MareNostrum 5 is not only highly powerful but also one of the greenest supercomputers in Europe and the 6th greenest supercomputer in the world, according to the Green500 list. While using state of the art energy-efficient HPC technologies.

MareNostrum 5 also distinguishes itself by its unique architecture. It combines a powerful general-purpose partition, operating without any accelerators and dedicated to classical computing and an accelerated partition, designed to push the frontiers of knowledge in artificial intelligence.

Designed with a particular focus on enhancing European medical research, MareNostrum 5 is poised to strengthen research in drug and vaccine development, virus spread simulations, Artificial Intelligence, and big data processing applications. The machine will also support traditional HPC applications, such as climate research, engineering, material science and earth sciences.

As one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, MareNostrum 5 provides an ideal environment for cutting-edge research and is set to propel European research and industry forward.

Sustainability and Future Outlook

The MareNostrum 5 system, located in a cutting-edge facility at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), is specifically designed to meet the demands of this supercomputer. It is highly energy-efficient, powered entirely by green energy, and utilizes heat reuse technology. Ranked among the world’s top supercomputers on the Green500 list, it stands out for its exceptional energy efficiency. Additionally, MareNostrum 5 will be expanded with a dedicated AI partition as part of the AI Factories initiative by EuroHPC-JU. This expansion will significantly enhance its AI and machine learning capabilities, making it one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe for training and inference of extremely large models.