APPLICATIONS

Barcelona Supercomputing Center MareNostrum Supercomputer access network has been enabled with IPv6. With the occasion of the Global IPv6 Summit in Barcelona, hosted by the Internet Global Congress (IGC), the access network used by the Scientifics from the entire world to access the latest of the supercomputers, "MareNostrum," from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), has been enabled with IPv6 connectivity. MareNostrum has been benchmarked by the top500 (November 2004) as the 1st European most powerful supercomputer, and the 4th in the world. The Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the National Center of Supercomputing in Spain, is a consortium among the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalonian Local Government) and the Technical University of Catalonia. Its mission is to investigate, develop and manage the technology to facilitate the advancement of science, with special care being paid to deep computing, computer architecture, life sciences and earth science. By enabling with IPv6 the access to MareNostrum, the goals of the BSC are reinforced as this access increases the possibilities for Scientists from the entire world to have end-to-end and secure access to the supercomputer to perform their duties. The new IPv6 access is being inaugurated during the presentation of Mateo Valero, director of the BSC, in the IGC plenary session, June 9th at 12:45. During this inaugural ceremony, the first public connection using IPv6 will be established to the MareNostrum and a graphic application will be performed via the IPv6 access. Further demonstrations will be performed in the IPv6 booth at the IGC exhibition. Consulintel, as part of the activities of the Euro6IX EC IST co-funded project, has cooperated with BSC in order to design and setup this access. It is remarkable the support provided by CESCA and RedIRIS, in order to facilitate the achievement of this milestone. Mateo Valero, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center Director, said, "Deploying the IPv6 access to our Center introduces new possibilities to offer MareNostrum services to the scientific community, which helps to fulfill our targets. Moreover, this has not introduced any additional cost to our original investments." "Once more, this IPv6 access proves that IPv6 enables innovation. The assets of the MareNostrum are key for the progress of the science, and IPv6 provides now already extra means for their exploitation. Furthermore, I'm convinced that we will be able to look for more advantage to the IPv6 access, such as end-to-end security, mobility and others to be investigated jointly with BSC," indicated Jordi Palet, CTO of Consulintel, Euro6IX technical manager and also organizer of the Global IPv6 Summit. For more information about BSC and MareNostrum, visit http://www.bsc.es.