Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya

The Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya (CESCA, previously named Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya, the process to update the current name that figures on EC databases has been started) is a public consortium created in 1991, integrated by the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (FCRI), nine Catalan universities (de Barcelona, Autònoma de Barcelona, Politècnica de Catalunya, Pompeu Fabra, de Girona, Rovira i Virgili, de Lleida, Oberta de Catalunya and Ramon Llull), and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

The fundamental objective of the CESCA is to manage infrastructures based on information and communication technologies (e-infrastructures), in order to provide support to universities and research. CESCA is recognized since 2000 as a scientific and technical singular facility (ICTS, in spanish) by the Ministry of Sciencie and Innovation.

CESCA has a wide experience in managing complex HPC systems, storage resources and networks. CESCA’s infrastructure includes large HPC systems with more than 1800 cores, high availability cloud-ready clusters based on blade technology and virtualization for hosting web applications, database servers like Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySql, and a centralized storage system providing multiple protocols (NFS, Fiber Channel and iSCSI). CESCA also manages the Anella Científica (Scientific Ring), a flexible and reliable infrastructure that connects almost a hundred institutions involved in R&D and innovation. It is also connected to RedIRIS and, through it, to GEANT2. CESCA’s infrastructure (for instance storage resources) is reachable through broadband networks.

CESCA partipates in national and international projects and currently, for instance, is member of Spanish NGI (National Grid Innitiative), of the DPAC consortium of the Gaia Project, of MEGHA RedIRIS project group for promoting cloud services.

Numexas Key personnel

Joan Cambras has a degree in mathematics from the University of Barcelona (UB) with specialization in applied mathematics, and a postgraduate degree in ‘Fundamentals and Applications of Artificial Intelligence’ by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. At CESCA since 1991: currently he is manager of the Applications and Projects department.

Alfred Gil has a degree in Chemistry by the UB and a PhD in Chemistry by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. He was awarded a Marie Curie research fellowship to make a half-year stay at CNRS in Lyon (Laboratoire de chimie). Currently, he is a HPC Support Scientist.

David Tur has a degree in physics from the UB and a PhD in Nanostructures and Nanotechnologies from the University of Milano Bicocca. Currently, he is a HPC Support Scientist.

*Pere Puigdomènec*h has just finished a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the UPC (formally, he hasn’t yet obtained the accreditation). He is maintaining Technical Support in HPC Engineering at CESCA.

Jordi Guijarro has a Computing Engineering degree by UOC. He is the Operations and Securety Service Manager.

Gorka Roldan has a Telecommunications Engineering degree by UPC. He has been working as Project Coordinator at CESCA since 2007.

Specific contribution to NUMEXAS

CESCA will participate in NUMEXAS as high-performance computer provider, and will participate supporting software developers in the implementations of their code in HPC machinery. They will be the leaders of WP8.