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History

In the late 1960s, Italian academia faced a pressing need for powerful supercomputers to support scientific computing. In 1969, recognizing this need, the Ministry of Education stepped in to offer crucial support to four Italian universities. Together, they formed a consortium and laid the foundation for the birth of CINECA, a pioneering supercomputing centre. CINECA marked a significant milestone by hosting the first supercomputer located in Italy, the CDC 6600, designed by Seymour Cray, regarded as the father of supercomputing. 

For over four decades, CINECA, along with its HPC department, has consistently led the way in Italy and Europe to establish a robust and dependable HPC environment. Moreover, CINECA has played a pivotal role in providing a continuous and comprehensive training platform. This platform encompasses fundamental and advanced HPC summer schools and specialized courses covering various HPC tools and techniques. An enduring testament to this commitment is the “Parallel and Vectorial Computing Summer School,” first hosted by CINECA in the summer of 1992 and still thriving today. 

Today, CINECA is the central reference point for Italy’s national academic and research community. Numerous research institutions across Italy have forged special collaboration agreements with CINECA to augment their scientific pursuits through access to computational tools and the centre’s rich expertise. Additionally, significant companies have established agreements with CINECA, entrusting their computational workloads to CINECA’s cutting-edge clusters. CINECA’s influence and contributions continue to shape the landscape of scientific computing and research in Italy and beyond.