This article retraces the origins of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), founded in Manno in 1991, and the fervent debate surrounding them. Relying on a vast corpus of primary sources collected in institutional, private, and national archives, we show how the early history of CSCS reflects key features of the Swiss federalist model, while also revealing its ambitions, challenges, and contradictions. The two main questions the research sought to answer are: Why build a supercomputer center in Switzerland? And why in Ticino? Our research shows that, as was commonly noted at the time, the supercomputer signaled a further step toward the digitization of Switzerland and was an act of solidarity with the Italian-speaking area of the country. Moreover, the supercomputer was intended to enhance Switzerland’s international dimension, stimulating collaborations with other European countries and even beyond. Finally, by highlighting the longstanding tension between centralizing and decentralizing efforts, the early history of CSCS reveals how, rather than following a linear trajectory, digital federalism faced a series of difficult political, economic, and cultural choices.