CIRCE strengthens its leadership as a technological driver in Aragón during a strategic visit to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center

CIRCE today reaffirmed its position as one of Aragón’s leading technological drivers during an institutional visit to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – National Supercomputing Centre (BSC-CNS), one of Europe’s most important scientific infrastructures in advanced computing.

The Aragonese delegation, led by CIRCE’s CEO, Andrés Llombart, was welcomed by the BSC’s management team and explored new avenues for collaboration in strategic areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity applied to mobility, dual-use technologies, and the digitalisation of the electricity system.

During the visit, the technology centre was supported by the President of Aragón, Jorge Azcón; the Regional Vice-President, Mar Vaquero; and the President of the TECNARA cluster, Félix Gil, in recognition of the decisive role CIRCE plays in transferring cutting-edge knowledge and science to the industrial fabric.

During the institutional visit, the Aragonese delegation also had the opportunity to see MareNostrum 5, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

CIRCE, Aragón’s technological lever for high-impact projects

During the meeting, CIRCE’s role as one of Aragón’s main technological levers for the development of advanced solutions in energy, sustainability, and digitalisation was highlighted.

This leadership position is reinforced through the strategic link maintained by the Aragonese centre with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, a collaboration that makes it possible to bring the power of supercomputing to the productive sector and accelerate the arrival of technological innovations in key areas of the economy.

At a time when Aragón is strengthening its appeal for investment linked to energy and digital infrastructures, CIRCE plays a key role in adding greater value to that growth by driving knowledge, technology, and in-house capabilities.

ASCENDER, an example of advanced collaboration between CIRCE and the BSC

The collaboration between CIRCE and the BSC has taken shape in projects such as ASCENDER, recently completed and focused on continuous computing architectures, or edge-to-cloud.

In this type of system, data processing is not concentrated at a single point but distributed throughout its entire journey, from capture in real physical environments — such as smart cities or agri-food settings — to arrival at large cloud computing centres.

In this project, CIRCE contributed its expertise in energy efficiency applied to advanced computing, addressing one of the main challenges of artificial intelligence and supercomputing: high energy consumption.

Thanks to this work, energy consumption per operation was reduced by 25%, and productivity for each additional unit of energy invested was almost doubled. This progress was made possible through the integration of energy indicators into decision-making algorithms, enabling more efficient use of computing resources and reducing the environmental impact of large-scale data processing.

ASCENDER demonstrates how collaboration between a leading scientific infrastructure and a technology centre such as CIRCE can be translated into solutions with real and immediate application in areas such as public services, mobility, and the agri-food sector.

Andrés Llombart: “Our mission is to ensure that top-level science is useful to Aragón’s industrial sector. Collaboration with the BSC and institutional support enable us to translate the potential of supercomputing and artificial intelligence into real solutions for energy, industry, and digitalisation”.

From energy to knowledge: Aragón’s strategic challenge

Aragón faces a decisive opportunity to move forward in building a stronger and more competitive technological ecosystem. To its prominent position in renewable energy generation and in attracting investment linked to data centres, it must now add research, talent, and its own technological capability in order to generate a greater economic and industrial impact.

In this context, partnerships such as the one between CIRCE and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center are key to connecting Aragón’s energy and industrial capacity with the development of advanced knowledge and high-impact technological applications.

Through this strategy, CIRCE is helping to establish Aragón not only as a destination for technological infrastructure, but also as a region that generates innovation, specialised knowledge, and solutions with international reach.