BSC to team up with Japanese Centre for Computational Science RIKEN

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and the RIKEN Centre for Computational Science (R-CCS), the leadership centre for supercomputing research in Japan, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Research Collaboration. This MOU is an expression of reciprocal interests in education and research to increase international co-operation between both parties, including the mutual use of the supercomputer Fugaku (RIKEN) and MareNostrum 4 and 5 (BSC).

The agreement provides for the implementation of different programs and activities, such as the exchange of researchers, students and staff, the exchange of scientific and technological information and research materials, and the execution of different projects of research collaboration. The MOU will be effective for a period of three years, that can be extended by the parties for additional years.

BSC and RIKEN have committed to the deployment of different projects of research collaboration, including: the development of urban digital twins, a virtual simulation of all the components of a city with a particular focus on traffic and pedestrian mobility to improve livability, sustainability and climate change adaptation, as well as resilience against natural and social hazards; and the elaboration of a general software ecosystem for using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in scientific simulation environments. Other research projects will be the exchange of processes and tools to evaluate the performance of the FX1000-like systems and a new programming model to support asynchronous parallelism and heterogeneity of devices with networked FPGAs.

In compliance with laws and regulations regarding the personal data, all the data exchanged between the parties will be processed for the only purposes connected with the scientific collaboration agreement.

The MOU was signed in Kobe, Japan by the Director of BSC, Mateo Valero, and the Director of R-CCS, Satoshi Matsuoka.

This article was first published on 13 October by Barcelona Supercomputing Center.