6 ms·

PhD student there. Ask me anything if you wish to know more about BSC. Some news: the new Marenostrum 5 no longer fits in the chapel, so it has been moved to t

PhD student there. Ask me anything if you wish to know more about BSC. Some news: the new Marenostrum 5 no longer fits in the chapel, so it has been moved to the contiguous building. But one quantum computer from the Quantum Spain project will be installed soon (in a couple of months). Easter Egg: whenever there is an official visit, they put Gregorian choirs in the chapel.

cameron_b 3y ago
The side hallway has a wonderful collection of previous rack instances. Cheers for the preservation efforts. What is your focus at the BSC?
- mofeing 3y ago
  I'm working on classical simulation of quantum computers using tensor networks. Basically trying to push the frontier of quantum advantage / supremacy from the classical side. BSC is fun due to its interdisciplinarity. I do quantum and HPC, but I have friends working on iron deposition on the seas (i.e. climate change), nuclear fusion simulations of a tokamak, large scale scientific visualization, protein folding and synthesis, ... The European Chips Act is also coordinated from there so there is a ton of people working on hardware design (specifically RISC-V).
  - wlst14 3y ago
    BSC headcount grow 500+ people in 2 years thanks to EU funds. Because the government does not know where to spend them. What will happen after 2025 when NextGeneration EU funding ends?
    - mofeing 3y ago
      This is not true. BSC had already a growing trend before the pandemy. In 2020-2021, before any EU fund, almost 200 new people were hired. Why are you harsh? Science is a good investment and BSC has proven to be a research center where a lot of quality research is done. Anyway, there are many plans to continue growing beyond the NextGeneration EU funds, which usually the steering committee explains on the yearly anual meeting. Keep in mind that "growing" does not always mean to grow the amount of people in a research group, but to try to create new research groups to keep it stable.
      - xondono 3y ago
        > This is not true. Pretty much all BSC activities are EU funded. > Why are you harsh? Where is the harshness? Asking “What’s the plan when the gravy train stops?” Is a perfectly valid question. > Science is a good investment Some science has been a good investment. Most (especially public funded, particularly in Spain) has been a very poor investment. As an obvious example, the new accelerator CERN is pushing for will have an atrocious ROI, just like most money spent on space exploration. We should not be taxing blue collar workers so that middle class “scientists” can call dibs on historic milestones.
        mofeing 3y ago
        > Pretty much all BSC activities are EU funded. Depending on the department, about half of the private investment can be up to 50%. > Where is the harshness? Asking “What’s the plan when the gravy train stops?” Is a perfectly valid question. I'm pointing to the other comments. I also try to answer question in the last paragraph. > Some science has been a good investment. Most (especially public funded, particularly in Spain) has been a very poor investment. In _general_, science is a good investment. I don't agree that there have been poor investments in Spain. Do you have numbers or reports about that? Most cases I know are that in Spain the Big Crisis cut investment and getting stable long-term fundship is almost imposible, which makes scientists' situation very unstable. And you need long-term investments in science to make returns. > As an obvious example, the new accelerator CERN is pushing for will have an atrocious ROI, just like most money spent on space exploration. It's not obvious to me. The LHC and space exploration have had huge indirect returns from the technology designed around it.
        wlst14 3y ago
        https://www.bsc.es/sites/default/files/public/content/discover-bsc/files/2021_Memoria_CCAA-EN-TJ.pdf https://www.bsc.es/sites/default/files/public/content/discov... Revenue from services rendered / Ingresos por prestación de servicios 8.293.375,25 € The rest is public funding.
        xondono 3y ago
  - spacelama 3y ago
    > The European Chips Act is also coordinated from there so there is a ton of people working on hardware design (specifically RISC-V). @mofeing I've seen openings regarding this and was super interested. Any ideas where I can find more info about the project / work that's being done?
    - mofeing 3y ago
      I don't know much more, but I've found the following projects at BSC that are currently active around the European Processor Initiative. - European Processor Initiative: Specific Grant Agreement 2 https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/epi-sga2-european-processor-initiative-sga2 https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/epi-... - RISC-V for cloud services: https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/riser-risc-v-cloud-services https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/rise... - eProcessor: https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/eprocessor-european-extendable-energy-efficient-energetic-embedded https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/epro... - DRAC: https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/drac-disseny-dacceleradors-basats-en-la-tecnologia-riscv-la/project-people https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/drac...
      - spacelama 3y ago
        Thank you thank you!
  - galcerte 3y ago
    do you happen to be working in CUCO?
    - mofeing 3y ago
      No, but some colleagues do. Also, I think some of my simulation software will start to be used by the project.
      - galcerte 3y ago
        Ah cool, will it be open sourced? I'm on that project myself, we are also dealing with simulating circuits, buuut I feel like we could improve our approach somewhat lol. For example, we had a bunch of trouble trying to speed things up, I immediately thought of trying to make most things run on a GPU but we quickly found out that our circuits just have too few qubits to be parallelized decently. More importantly, I am not very optimistic (to say the least) about the short- to medium-term real-world applications of quantum circuits we are looking into (we do time series classification, which is quite removed from other domains which work better on these computers), and I got the same feeling from the literature. Should I be feeling differently?
santiagobasulto 3y ago
I just happen to be visiting Barcelona for a few days. Is it possible to visit the BSC? Any other nerd recommendations that can spare me from yet another Passeig de Gracia walk?
- mofeing 3y ago
  Yes, but you must contact through a form or get someone from inside to show it to you. Unfortunately, I'm out of town til next week so I cannot offer it myself. Check out https://www.bsc.es/discover-bsc/visit-our-supercomputer https://www.bsc.es/discover-bsc/visit-our-supercomputer If you want to visit some other nerdy places, I suggest you to visit: - CaixaForum: cool science museum - Observatori Fabra: a very old telescope (no longer used for science) but has cool views of the city These days there is a very cool interactive AI exposition at CCCB. I really recommend it.
  - santiagobasulto 3y ago
    Awesome, thanks! Just submitted the form, hope I’m lucky to see it before leaving.
    - mofeing 3y ago
      good luck and have fun!
      - santiagobasulto 3y ago
        Wow, thanks very much! We're leaving tomorrow, but I'm gonna check these out in my next visit.
    - kinow 3y ago
      If the guide is not available just DM me one or two days before you arrive. Any BSC staff can give a tour to a small group. But it is necessary to schedule ahead and avoid events/other tours. You can also visit the luminous click on Via Laietana. It is old, free (on the sidewalk), but interesting. You can enter any library to browse. Abello library in Les Corts hosts the Asimov Foundation collection. I think the Sagrada Familia library has the scientific illustration collection, etc. I remember seeing a really old elevator in the Gòtic neighborhood... I can't remember the name of the museum where it was but it was at the museum entrance (you can just walk in and have a look). You can also walk in most campi like UPC, UB, etc. They have some exhibitions and also panels with history of the uni and faculties. As well as libraries too. Have fun!
wlst14 3y ago
The quantum computer is corruption. They created an spin-off where some management guys have shares on the company. Then launched a procurement. Only the spin-off company went for the procurement and won. This was paid with European Funds and is illegal. https://contrataciondelestado.es/wps/poc?uri=deeplink%3Adetalle_licitacion&idEvl=MnKdMDvqKPqmq21uxhbaVQ%3D%3D https://contrataciondelestado.es/wps/poc?uri=deeplink%3Adeta...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mofeing 3y ago
  wtf are you talking about? I know people from both sides and can assure you that the whole process was done transparently and legally. The external board which selected the winner proposal did a blind review (they only knew the proposals, not who made those proposals). It's true that Qilimanjaro is a spin-off of BSC, but they are the only company in Spain that can fabricate quantum chips. Furthermore, the chips are fabricated by Quantware and IQM, while Qilimanjaro provides the testing, calibration and service. One of the requirements from the European Funds is that the providers must be European companies. There are not many fully european companies that fabricate digital quantum chips, I'm afraid. If you have doubts about the legality of the process, I welcome you to contact the coordinator of the project.
  - wlst14 3y ago
    You might be right. Just open the document named "Informe de valoración de los criterios de adjudicación cuantificables mediante juicio de valor" in the link above. It is digitally signed by Juan José García Ripoll, an expert that should not have any conflict of interest. https://web.archive.org/web/20220521122845/http://quantic.bsc.es/collaborators/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220521122845/http://quantic.bs... (The website was removed) So it was a collaborator. And the team leader was Artur Garcia. Oh! Wait! Artur is a co-founder: https://www.qilimanjaro.tech/team/ https://www.qilimanjaro.tech/team/ What a plot twist hum! So they knew each other. And instead of doing this from a BSC salary they launched an spin-off and then sold their work to the BSC being part of BSC while he was working 50% of his time for BSC and therefore being a public employee and having an incompatibility.

cameron_b 3y ago

The side hallway has a wonderful collection of previous rack instances. Cheers for the preservation efforts. What is your focus at the BSC?

mofeing 3y ago
I'm working on classical simulation of quantum computers using tensor networks. Basically trying to push the frontier of quantum advantage / supremacy from the classical side. BSC is fun due to its interdisciplinarity. I do quantum and HPC, but I have friends working on iron deposition on the seas (i.e. climate change), nuclear fusion simulations of a tokamak, large scale scientific visualization, protein folding and synthesis, ... The European Chips Act is also coordinated from there so there is a ton of people working on hardware design (specifically RISC-V).
- wlst14 3y ago
  BSC headcount grow 500+ people in 2 years thanks to EU funds. Because the government does not know where to spend them. What will happen after 2025 when NextGeneration EU funding ends?
  - mofeing 3y ago
    This is not true. BSC had already a growing trend before the pandemy. In 2020-2021, before any EU fund, almost 200 new people were hired. Why are you harsh? Science is a good investment and BSC has proven to be a research center where a lot of quality research is done. Anyway, there are many plans to continue growing beyond the NextGeneration EU funds, which usually the steering committee explains on the yearly anual meeting. Keep in mind that "growing" does not always mean to grow the amount of people in a research group, but to try to create new research groups to keep it stable.
    - xondono 3y ago
      > This is not true. Pretty much all BSC activities are EU funded. > Why are you harsh? Where is the harshness? Asking “What’s the plan when the gravy train stops?” Is a perfectly valid question. > Science is a good investment Some science has been a good investment. Most (especially public funded, particularly in Spain) has been a very poor investment. As an obvious example, the new accelerator CERN is pushing for will have an atrocious ROI, just like most money spent on space exploration. We should not be taxing blue collar workers so that middle class “scientists” can call dibs on historic milestones.
      - mofeing 3y ago
        > Pretty much all BSC activities are EU funded. Depending on the department, about half of the private investment can be up to 50%. > Where is the harshness? Asking “What’s the plan when the gravy train stops?” Is a perfectly valid question. I'm pointing to the other comments. I also try to answer question in the last paragraph. > Some science has been a good investment. Most (especially public funded, particularly in Spain) has been a very poor investment. In _general_, science is a good investment. I don't agree that there have been poor investments in Spain. Do you have numbers or reports about that? Most cases I know are that in Spain the Big Crisis cut investment and getting stable long-term fundship is almost imposible, which makes scientists' situation very unstable. And you need long-term investments in science to make returns. > As an obvious example, the new accelerator CERN is pushing for will have an atrocious ROI, just like most money spent on space exploration. It's not obvious to me. The LHC and space exploration have had huge indirect returns from the technology designed around it.
        wlst14 3y ago
        https://www.bsc.es/sites/default/files/public/content/discover-bsc/files/2021_Memoria_CCAA-EN-TJ.pdf https://www.bsc.es/sites/default/files/public/content/discov... Revenue from services rendered / Ingresos por prestación de servicios 8.293.375,25 € The rest is public funding.
        xondono 3y ago
- spacelama 3y ago
  > The European Chips Act is also coordinated from there so there is a ton of people working on hardware design (specifically RISC-V). @mofeing I've seen openings regarding this and was super interested. Any ideas where I can find more info about the project / work that's being done?
  - mofeing 3y ago
    I don't know much more, but I've found the following projects at BSC that are currently active around the European Processor Initiative. - European Processor Initiative: Specific Grant Agreement 2 https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/epi-sga2-european-processor-initiative-sga2 https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/epi-... - RISC-V for cloud services: https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/riser-risc-v-cloud-services https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/rise... - eProcessor: https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/eprocessor-european-extendable-energy-efficient-energetic-embedded https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/epro... - DRAC: https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/drac-disseny-dacceleradors-basats-en-la-tecnologia-riscv-la/project-people https://www.bsc.es/es/research-and-development/projects/drac...
    - spacelama 3y ago
      Thank you thank you!
- galcerte 3y ago
  do you happen to be working in CUCO?
  - mofeing 3y ago
    No, but some colleagues do. Also, I think some of my simulation software will start to be used by the project.
    - galcerte 3y ago
      Ah cool, will it be open sourced? I'm on that project myself, we are also dealing with simulating circuits, buuut I feel like we could improve our approach somewhat lol. For example, we had a bunch of trouble trying to speed things up, I immediately thought of trying to make most things run on a GPU but we quickly found out that our circuits just have too few qubits to be parallelized decently. More importantly, I am not very optimistic (to say the least) about the short- to medium-term real-world applications of quantum circuits we are looking into (we do time series classification, which is quite removed from other domains which work better on these computers), and I got the same feeling from the literature. Should I be feeling differently?

santiagobasulto 3y ago

I just happen to be visiting Barcelona for a few days. Is it possible to visit the BSC? Any other nerd recommendations that can spare me from yet another Passeig de Gracia walk?

mofeing 3y ago
Yes, but you must contact through a form or get someone from inside to show it to you. Unfortunately, I'm out of town til next week so I cannot offer it myself. Check out https://www.bsc.es/discover-bsc/visit-our-supercomputer https://www.bsc.es/discover-bsc/visit-our-supercomputer If you want to visit some other nerdy places, I suggest you to visit: - CaixaForum: cool science museum - Observatori Fabra: a very old telescope (no longer used for science) but has cool views of the city These days there is a very cool interactive AI exposition at CCCB. I really recommend it.
- santiagobasulto 3y ago
  Awesome, thanks! Just submitted the form, hope I’m lucky to see it before leaving.
  - mofeing 3y ago
    good luck and have fun!
    - santiagobasulto 3y ago
      Wow, thanks very much! We're leaving tomorrow, but I'm gonna check these out in my next visit.
  - kinow 3y ago
    If the guide is not available just DM me one or two days before you arrive. Any BSC staff can give a tour to a small group. But it is necessary to schedule ahead and avoid events/other tours. You can also visit the luminous click on Via Laietana. It is old, free (on the sidewalk), but interesting. You can enter any library to browse. Abello library in Les Corts hosts the Asimov Foundation collection. I think the Sagrada Familia library has the scientific illustration collection, etc. I remember seeing a really old elevator in the Gòtic neighborhood... I can't remember the name of the museum where it was but it was at the museum entrance (you can just walk in and have a look). You can also walk in most campi like UPC, UB, etc. They have some exhibitions and also panels with history of the uni and faculties. As well as libraries too. Have fun!

wlst14 3y ago

The quantum computer is corruption. They created an spin-off where some management guys have shares on the company. Then launched a procurement. Only the spin-off company went for the procurement and won. This was paid with European Funds and is illegal. https://contrataciondelestado.es/wps/poc?uri=deeplink%3Adetalle_licitacion&idEvl=MnKdMDvqKPqmq21uxhbaVQ%3D%3D https://contrataciondelestado.es/wps/poc?uri=deeplink%3Adeta...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mofeing 3y ago
wtf are you talking about? I know people from both sides and can assure you that the whole process was done transparently and legally. The external board which selected the winner proposal did a blind review (they only knew the proposals, not who made those proposals). It's true that Qilimanjaro is a spin-off of BSC, but they are the only company in Spain that can fabricate quantum chips. Furthermore, the chips are fabricated by Quantware and IQM, while Qilimanjaro provides the testing, calibration and service. One of the requirements from the European Funds is that the providers must be European companies. There are not many fully european companies that fabricate digital quantum chips, I'm afraid. If you have doubts about the legality of the process, I welcome you to contact the coordinator of the project.
- wlst14 3y ago
  You might be right. Just open the document named "Informe de valoración de los criterios de adjudicación cuantificables mediante juicio de valor" in the link above. It is digitally signed by Juan José García Ripoll, an expert that should not have any conflict of interest. https://web.archive.org/web/20220521122845/http://quantic.bsc.es/collaborators/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220521122845/http://quantic.bs... (The website was removed) So it was a collaborator. And the team leader was Artur Garcia. Oh! Wait! Artur is a co-founder: https://www.qilimanjaro.tech/team/ https://www.qilimanjaro.tech/team/ What a plot twist hum! So they knew each other. And instead of doing this from a BSC salary they launched an spin-off and then sold their work to the BSC being part of BSC while he was working 50% of his time for BSC and therefore being a public employee and having an incompatibility.