Atos, which will build, “within the year”, the second computer in the world in Bologna, is a candidate to become an “aggregator pole” in the supercomputer chain. This was declared to DigitEconomy.24 (report by Sole 24 Ore Radiocor and the Luiss Business School) Giuseppe Di Franco, CEO of the Italian division, explaining how important it is to protect the concept of European data sovereignty, avoiding that the Old Continent remains crushed in the Chinese and American competition. In the meantime, the company is preparing to hire 200-300 employees in two to three years in the new headquarters in Bologna. Atos has also recently become an industrial partner of Noovle, Tim’s new data center company: «Our goal is to be a partner in digital transformations, acting as an industrial partner to bring international know-how, skills and experience».
Together with Nvidia you will build Leonardo, one of the five most powerful supercomputers in the world, within the Bologna technopole, managed by the Cineca inter-university consortium. When will it be ready?
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Leonardo is one of the largest supercomputers, second in the world, after one available in Japan. It is capable of 250 billion operations per second. We are in the construction phase, the project will see the light at the end of this year. There is a very important aspect behind this investment logic, that is to give a great processing capacity to companies, institutions, PA in order to create simulation models, such as those for smart cities or scientific research. In Bologna, 80% of the capacity of all of Italy and 20% of the European one will be built.
Do you already have the necessary skills to carry out this work?
First of all, Atos, the only European manufacturer, has been investing for years in High performance computing (Hpc). On the other hand, the fact that an important part of scientific and technological research is done on European instruments has a very important value. Today we are experimenting on the subject of vaccines against Covid how much we are paying for not having invested enough in scientific research. Within Atos, therefore, the skills are there, but they must be increased in the territory. In the meantime, we have decided to open our own office in Bologna and to start a collaboration process with universities to recruit young talents, following the lines of what we have already experienced in Southern Italy, in Naples, where we have 300 employees.