The Regional Government of Castilla y León is investing 5.1 million euros, financed with European REACT-EU funds, to increase by tenfold the computing capacity of the Supercomputing Centre of Castilla y León (SCAYLE), which is a member of DIGIS3. This has been one of the objectives set out at the beginning of the Legislature of the Regional Minister for Mobility and Digital Transformation. This investment responds to the growing demand for computing capacity on the part of researchers and companies.
The contract for the expansion of the Calendula supercomputer, the computing infrastructure at the heart of the SCAYLE Foundation, has already been signed and will incorporate 235 new servers to boost the training of artificial neural networks and generative artificial intelligence systems by increasing the number of possible operations per second to 8 trillion (8,000 TeraFLOPS).
These servers will also allow for a significant increase in RAM memory capacity (450 TeraBytes), which is particularly relevant for the genomic research being carried out by various research groups in Castilla y León and which will enable progress to be made in the field of personalised medicine.
In addition to the servers, the legislature foresaw the acquisition of the necessary network equipment to interconnect all the servers and build new networks using Ethernet 25GbE and Infiniband NDR technologies. It should be noted that, although this computing infrastructure has been renewed in recent years, going from 29 TeraFLOPS of computing speed in 2009 to 779 in 2022, this contract will be the most ambitious expansion since its creation.