JANUS
The Janus supercomputer is a modular, massively parallel, and reconfigurable FPGA-based computing system for High Performance Scientific Computing.
JANUS II
The JanusII Special Purpose Computer is the new generation supercomputer located at BIFI. As its predecessor, JanusII was designed as a multipurpose reprogramable supercomputer, also based on reconfigurable FPGA processors.
Research
Research Janus special purpose computer family has been so far devoted to the study and simulation of spin glasses, paradigm of complex systems.
Projects
The Janus Collaboration team has participated in several scientific projects related with dedicated supercomputers.
History
The Janus researchers have a large experience in the special purpose computers design and development during the last 20 years
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Introduction

Computers have become an essential tool in our quotidian lives. Very simple daily mundane activities as buying a train ticket or sending someone a message require the use of conventional computers. Of course, they play a very important role in more difficult tasks, as bank transfers for instance…
On the other hand, computers have also made possible many advances in Science and nowadays are patently present in a very wide set of different scientific areas. Indeed, many institutions around the World spend a huge amount of money and human effort to build clusters of computers (see for example  www.top500.org/lists/ for a detailed ranked list of the most powerful supercomputers in the World).

For some specific problems, conventional computers are not enough. They would spend thousands of years to perform some particular calculations. So in the framework of supercomputation one finds the Special Purpose Computers, which are developed and designed to perform any concrete heavy calculation.
In our Institute we have two special purpose computers. The first one, called Janus, was developed and designed in the last first decade of this century, being fully operative in 2008. More recently, the Janus Collaboration designed a second Janus generation machine called JanusII, that is at Bifi from end July 2013. In order to have more details regarding both special purpose computers, please click on the following:

The Janus Special Purpose Computer

The Janus supercomputer is a modular, massively parallel, and reconfigurable FPGA-based computing system for High Performance Scientific Computing. It takes the name from the ancient Roman god of gates and doors, of beginnings and endings, of passages and time, usually represented by two faces, one looking to the past, another one to future. After a gestation period of around two years, Janus was born in 2008 thanks to a very successful scientific collaboration between researchers from BIFI and the Universidad de Zaragoza, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad de Extremadura, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” and Università di Ferrara.

The Janus II Special Purpose Computer

The JanusII Special Purpose Computer is the new generation supercomputer located at BIFI. As its predecessor Janus, JanusII was designed as a multipurpose reprogramable supercomputer, also based on reconfigurable FPGA processors. JanusII was born during the summer of 2013 as the second high challenging project of the Janus Collaboration. These researchers from Spain and Italy (BIFI,Universidad de Zaragoza, Universidad Complutense de Madrid,  Universidad de Extremadura, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” and Università di Ferrara) went an step further in the development and design of the new supercomputer respect its predecessor.uters, please click on the following: