Mexico to Receive National Supercomputer

The Mexican government has entered into an agreement with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) for the construction of a national supercomputer. This was reported by Mexican media last week. The project, which is to be officially announced this week, will create Latin America's "largest public high-performance computing system," it is stated. Preliminary computing capacities will be hosted in Spain.

The project "will be 100% Mexican and will differ significantly from the current largest [computing center] located in the south of the continent, which belongs to a private company," said Jorge Luis Pérez Hernández, Mexico's national coordinator for digital infrastructure. Speaking to the Mexican business newspaper El Economista, he explained that during the construction, which will take between 24 and 36 months, Mexico will utilize BSC's capacity immediately. This allows priority projects to commence as early as January 2026.

The supercomputer will initially be used for developing advanced climate models, analyzing millions of satellite images for agricultural monitoring, massive data processing for the tax authority and customs, and training AI language models for government institutions. "Problems that can be solved here in a few hours or days would take years on a normal computer," said Pérez Hernández, highlighting the difference between traditional data processing and supercomputing.

Strategy for Technological Sovereignty

For Mateo Valero Cortés, director of BSC, the collaboration with Mexico comes at a crucial time for global scientific development. He recalled that his institution has over two decades of experience. BSC currently operates the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, which is among the most powerful in the world. Valero Cortés explained that his center is working in areas such as digital twins, virtual models of complex systems like the human body, cities, circulatory systems, and climate phenomena. He also emphasized pioneering work in language preservation by developing its own language models to avoid dependence on corporations like Amazon or Google. "A country that has its calculations, computers, and data can do things that others would otherwise do, and thus would not be sovereign," he said.

José Antonio Peña Merino, head of Mexico's digital transformation and telecommunications agency, assured that the announcement is part of the "Plan México," a national strategy to equip the country with its supercomputer infrastructure. The initiative responds to existing limitations in Mexico's public computing infrastructure and, according to official statements, is therefore central to the country's strategy for technological sovereignty. Mexico's limited computing infrastructure, authorities say, restricts the implementation of political measures, scientific research, and risk prevention.

(akn)