ICSC: The Italian National Research Centre on HPC, Big Data and Quantum computing

¹ INFN Bologna, Viale Carlo Berti-Pichat 6/2, 40127, Bologna, Italy
² INFN Ferrara, via Saragat 1 - I 44122 Ferrara, Italy
³ INFN Pisa, Largo B. Pontecorvo, 3 – 56127 Pisa, Italy
⁴ INFN Napoli, Complesso Universitario di Monte S. Angelo, ed. 6 - Via Cintia, 80126, Napoli, Italy
⁵ INFN CNAF, Viale Carlo Berti-Pichat 6/2, 40127, Bologna, Italy
⁶ INFN Bari, Via E. Orabona 4 - 70125 - Bari, Italy
⁷ Università degli Studi di Bologna, DIFA, Via Irnerio 46, 40126, Bologna, Italy
^§ Now at: Fondazione ICSC, Via Magnanelli 2, 40033, Casalecchio di Reno, Italy

^* Corresponding author: Claudio.Grandi@bo.infn.it

Published online: 6 May 2024

Abstract

ICSC (“Italian Center for SuperComputing”) is one of the five Italian National Centres created within the framework of the NextGenerationEU funding by the European Commission. The aim of ICSC, designed and approved through 2022 and eventually started in September 2022, is to create the national digital infrastructure for research and innovation, leveraging existing HPC, HTC and Big Data infrastructures and evolving towards a cloud data-lake model. It will be available to the scientific and industrial communities through flexible and uniform cloud web interfaces and will be relying on a high-level support team; as such, it will form a globally attractive ecosystem based on strategic public-private partnerships to fully exploit top level digital infrastructure for scientific and technical computing and promote the development of new computing technologies. The ICSC IT infrastructure is built upon existing scientific digital infrastructures as provided by the major national players: GARR, the Italian NREN, provides the network infrastructure, whose capacity will be upgraded to multiples of Tbps; CINECA hosts Leonardo, one of the world largest HPC systems, with a power of over 250 Pflops, to be further increased and complemented with a quantum computer; INFN contributes with its distributed Big Data cloud infrastructure, built in the last decades to respond to the needs of the HEP community. On top of the IT infrastructure, several thematic activities will be funded and will focus on the development of tools and applications in several research domains. Of particular relevance to this audience are the activities on "Fundamental Research and Space Economy" and "Astrophysics and Cosmos Observations", strictly aligned with the INFN and HEP core activities. Finally, two technological research activities will foster research on "Future HPC and Big Data" and "Quantum Computing".