The future of computing is already in Bologna: supercomputing, AI and quantum machines at the Tecnopolo

There is a place in Italy where the future of computational power is not a promise but an operating reality. It sits in Bologna, inside an industrial area that over the past few years has undergone a radical transformation: from a decommissioned production zone to one of Europe's most advanced technology hubs. It is called DAMA, home to the Tecnopolo di Bologna, and within its walls world-class digital infrastructures are reshaping the way science, medicine and artificial intelligence evolve.

At the heart of this ecosystem stands Leonardo, one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, capable of executing billions upon billions of operations per second. This is not a record kept for its own sake: Leonardo is used daily in frontier scientific research, climate simulations, the development of new drugs, the analysis of complex physical systems and the testing of AI-based models. It is a machine that turns impossible questions into computable answers.

But Leonardo no longer works alone. In recent months the infrastructure hosted at the Tecnopolo has expanded significantly, building around the main supercomputer a constellation of complementary systems. Lisa is the platform dedicated to training advanced AI models, designed to meet the growing computational demand that the artificial intelligence sector generates every single day. Gaia is the cloud system that allows vast amounts of data to be stored, shared and analysed securely and at scale, a critical backbone for anyone working with datasets that traditional systems could not handle. Completing the picture is Marco Polo, a new supercomputing system that works alongside Leonardo in high-performance scientific simulations, broadening the overall computational capacity of the entire hub.

The most fascinating chapter, however, concerns quantum computing. CINECA, which manages part of these infrastructures together with ICSC — the National Centre for High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, funded under Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan — hosts NOTS and SOL, the two quantum computers with the highest qubit count currently in Italy. These machines do not replace traditional supercomputers; they work with them, creating a hybrid ecosystem in which classical and quantum computing integrate to tackle problems of extraordinary complexity.

The implications for the digital world and for AI development are tangible and measurable. Having infrastructures of this calibre means being able to train language models and machine learning systems with a level of power that until a few years ago was the exclusive domain of large private American corporations. It means making Europe — and Italy in particular — a credible player in the global race for artificial intelligence, not merely as a technology consumer but as a producer of research and innovation.

The Tecnopolo di Bologna therefore represents a paradigm shift. At a time when the debate around AI frequently focuses on algorithms and interfaces, this hub serves as a reminder that everything rests on hardware: the raw computational power on which the digital future is built, one qubit at a time.