Italy advances supercomputing through ENEA upgrades and renewable energy integration

Italy is advancing its high-performance computing capabilities through significant upgrades to its supercomputing infrastructure, focusing on both computational power and environmental sustainability.

ENEA has increased the computing capacity of its CRESCO8 supercomputer from 2 to 9 Pflops through a collaboration with Lenovo. This 350% increase allows researchers to perform more complex simulations in fields such as nuclear fusion, climate modeling, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics. The new platform utilizes liquid-cooled infrastructure to maintain energy efficiency while significantly reducing execution times for scientific codes.

In Bologna, the Leonardo supercomputer, managed by CINECA, will be partially powered by a new agrivoltaic plant developed by the Hera Group. This project, part of an Energy Park, is expected to produce 30GWh of renewable energy annually, avoiding approximately 7,000 tons of CO2 emissions. The initiative, managed by the subsidiary Helisa, aims to combine high computational power with local renewable energy production, marking a significant step in sustainable supercomputing architecture.