Lenovo will invest 7 million euros in the Barcelona Super Computing Center (BSC-CNS) over the next three years to advance precision medicine through supercomputing and in the design and development of open-source European chips. The investment, which is the highest by the Chinese technology multinational in research in Spain, will also be allocated to the creation of more supercomputers and energy-sustainable data centers.
Part of the resources will be used to improve and accelerate precision medicine and the generation of new treatments against diseases such as cancer. The Chinese company's investment is part of its commitment to Europe, along with the new factory in Hungary and the research center it has in Germany.
"We are committed to growing the European agenda, we share a common vision to promote open source," said Lenovo Vice President Kirk Skaugen, after signing the research agreement this Monday, reports ACN.
Indeed, one objective of the partnership between Lenovo and the BSC is to adopt open architecture to help scientists and researchers have smarter, more efficient, and sustainable supercomputing platforms. The reason Lenovo has decided to invest in the BSC-CNS is, according to its director, Mateo Valero, due to the quality of the center's work. "Why have they chosen Barcelona? Because we are the best, we are the champions," Valero emphasized.
"We are the largest supercomputing center in Europe, with about 800 people, and we have six years of experience working with Lenovo," recalled the director of the BSC. "It's a good experience, and that's why Lenovo has decided to invest more," Valero thanked, detailing that one of the projects that will benefit from Lenovo's 7 million injection will be genomic research led by Miquel Moretó, from the BSC team. This research seeks to generate new treatments against diseases like cancer, and supercomputing facilitates the storage of DNA-related data, which can occupy millions of gigabytes of information. "The alliance between Lenovo and the BSC also has the ambition to achieve that efficiency using the minimum amount of energy," pointed out the director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
In fact, the estimated consumption of the most powerful supercomputers can be around 25 MW, equivalent to the consumption of a medium-sized city. For this reason, the joint research between BSC-CNS and Lenovo—led by Julita Corbalán—will seek to build more energy-efficient, sustainable, and lower-cost supercomputers and data centers. Finally, the agreement seeks to boost Europe's competitiveness in new technologies and in the manufacturing of chips and semiconductors, after the many problems in sectors such as automotive, IT, and health due to the pandemic and the dependence on markets like China.