They plan to build the most powerful supercomputer in Latin America: the project details

Mexico announced the construction of Coatlicue, the most powerful supercomputer in Latin America, in a move aimed at transforming the country's digital infrastructure. The initiative represents a significant leap forward for technological sovereignty and the development of artificial intelligence in the country.

The planned investment is 6 billion pesos (approximately $326 million USD), and the expectation is that the system will drive large-scale data projects, strengthening national autonomy and capacity to manage strategic information.

The announcement was made during the morning press conference of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who emphasized Coatlicue's importance to the administration: “We are very excited. This will allow Mexico to fully participate in the use of artificial intelligence and data processing, something for which we currently lack the capacity,” Sheinbaum stated.

Coatlicue's projected capacity is 314 petaflops (314 quadrillion operations per second). This is seven times more powerful than the most advanced machine in the region, which is located in Brazil, explained José Merino, head of the Telecommunications and Digital Transformation Agency of Mexico.

The implementation of Coatlicue addresses the limitations currently faced by national systems, which extend processing times from weeks to months, impacting key areas such as climate modeling, fiscal analysis, scientific simulations, and risk monitoring.

Authorities believe this advancement will provide “full sovereignty” over strategic data to public institutions and the research community, reducing calculations from months to hours thanks to parallel computing.

Companies like PEMEX will be able to optimize the identification of deposits by processing seismic and geological data, while tax agencies will accelerate the analysis of tax returns and audits. In the agricultural sector, Coatlicue will allow the analysis of more than two million satellite images to study soils, droughts, and crop anomalies—key information for food security and water planning.

For public health, the system will facilitate the analysis of millions of scientific documents, genomic records, and epidemiological data—tasks that are currently impossible to manage manually.

Mexico has also signed a cooperation agreement with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, which will allow temporary access to the MareNostrum 5 system while construction is completed. Additionally, it has established training agreements with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in India to train specialized personnel and facilitate technology transfer.

Technical Details of Coatlicue

From a technical standpoint, Coatlicue will be built in several stages following international engineering standards. It is projected to integrate approximately 14,480 graphics processing units distributed across 7,500 chassis, housed in roughly 200 high-density cabinets. The system will utilize water cooling and high-speed connectivity to manage the enormous volume of data.

The final location of the center will be selected in January 2026 by a specialized committee, and development will proceed in the usual phases of design, construction, and validation. Coatlicue will be the core of the National Supercomputing Cluster, which currently operates at 9.45 petaflops and has more than 10,000 terabytes of storage.

In parallel, during the transition and training phase, authorities will have access to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to refine climate models and prepare for disaster risks. Temporary access to MareNostrum 5 will ensure the continued use of advanced technology while the main construction is completed.

Toward Digital Sovereignty

The development of the supercomputer also addresses the need to reduce dependence on foreign private platforms. Coatlicue will allow for the training of language models and artificial intelligence systems for federal institutions, strengthening the country's independence in managing strategic data and responding to an increasingly critical demand.

Authorities have emphasized that the limitations of the current infrastructure have forced reliance on external services for the development of artificial intelligence, a situation considered a long-term risk. With this advancement, Mexico seeks to consolidate its digital sovereignty.

With Coatlicue, Mexico positions itself at the forefront of Latin American supercomputing, surpassing Brazil and Argentina in installed capacity. However, the global benchmark remains El Capitan in the United States, with a power of 1,809 exaflops, a magnitude still far beyond the reach of Mexico's infrastructure.