The Galician Supercomputing Center (Cesga) will build a data center in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, to house the Finisterrae IV supercomputer.

The Regional Minister of Education, Science, Universities and Vocational Training of the Xunta de Galicia, Román Rodríguez, announced this week that the autonomous government will declare the data center as a "strategic research project of public initiative of Galicia."

The initiative is expected to see a total investment of €56 million ($65.45m), of which €13 million ($15.2m) will be allocated to the construction of the data center in the Sionlla industrial park.

The new building will be erected on a plot of more than 9,100 sqm (97,951 sq ft) on which 5,900 sqm (63,507 sq ft) will be built; the building will have 2,700 sqm (29,062 sq ft), and the exterior of the center will have 3,250 sqm (34,983 sq ft).

The Xunta said that the data center will incorporate energy efficiency and sustainability criteria. It will also have air conditioning systems of high technical adequacy, photovoltaic panels, as well as monitoring and surveillance systems.

Work will begin in October by the Copasa-Dominion joint venture and is expected to be completed in the summer of 2026.

The Xunta de Galicia has budgeted €18.6 million ($21.74m) for the acquisition of the Finisterrae IV supercomputer, which will provide additional computing capacity to Cesga.

The supercomputer is expected to have 20 petaflops of computing power, and the data center will also house a quantum computer.

According to the newspaper La Voz de Galicia, the quantum computer will have a capacity of 45 qubits, which will make it the most powerful in southern Europe to be installed in a public institution.

Cesga has previously explored quantum computing with the signing of deals with Fujitsu and Oxford Quantum Circuits in April 2023. Those agreements saw the deployment of an OQC 32 qubit computer, with Fujitsu's 34 qubit quantum simulator.

Finisterrae IV is expected to reinforce the Galician technological infrastructure to position it in the European R&D&I field and enable the Galician scientific community to advance more rapidly in areas such as high-energy physics, meteorology, drug design, and AI.

The official declaration of the project as a strategic project will have to be approved by the Consello da Xunta and will be on public display until September 24.

This piece was automatically translated from DCD's Spanish site and edited by a member of DCD staff.