Leonardo, the new supercomputer that projects Italy towards computing for research and technological innovation

Leonardo is the new supercomputer that projects Italy towards computing for research and technological innovation of the exascale class, conceived and managed by Cineca, it will be one of the five most powerful supercomputers in the world and will be hosted in the spaces made available by the Region Emilia-Romagna at the Bologna Technopole. The project for the Leonardo system was presented by Cineca representing Italy in agreement with the Ministry of Education, University and Research, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the International School of Advanced Studies. (SISSA) and approved by the European Joint Undertaking EuroHPC.

The Italian project, Leonardo, was presented during a press conference held at the Miur, in which, in addition to Minister Miur Marco Bussetti, the Director General DG Connect of the European Commission, Roberto Viola, and the President of Cineca participated.

The hosting agreements between EuroHPC JU and the eight sites where its first pre-exascale supercomputers will be installed were signed in Strasbourg last November. The new supercomputers will be made accessible to European researchers, industry and businesses to develop new applications in areas such as artificial intelligence and personalized medicine, drug and materials design, bioengineering, weather forecasting and the fight against climate changes.

For Italy, the agreement that officially launches the procurement activities of the new computing systems was signed by Prof. Ing. Eugenio di Sciascio, President of Cineca.

The process of acquiring the new supercomputers therefore officially kicks off: three of the new supercomputers will be able to perform over 150 million billion calculations per second.

The new supercomputer will have a peak performance of 200+ PFlop / s, 3+ PB of RAM, 150 PB I / O, 150PB of storage.