The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking moves ahead full steam with a new legislative proposal presented by the EC and the announcement of its first executive director.
High-performance computing or supercomputing is the use of extremely powerful computers for applications across all branches of science, industry and the public sector. It is essential for the digital economy and the digital transformation of society, enables big data analytics, artificial intelligence and cloud computing. In this way, it enables major innovations and scientific advances and is an essential digital capacity for Europe. In her address on the ‘State of the Union’ on 16 September, President of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen thus announced “an investment of € 8 bn into the next generation of supercomputers – cutting-edge technology made in Europe”. The proposed spending covers the budget from 2021 to 2033.
Von der Leyen’s promise became more concrete only two days later, when on 18 September, EC Executive Vice-President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age Margrethe Vestager presented the EC proposals for a new Regulation of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, in order to maintain and advance Europe’s leading role in super- and quantum computing. EuroHPC JU seeks to provide computing solutions, improving cooperation in advanced scientific research, boosting industrial competitiveness, and ensuring European technological and digital autonomy.
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) was established as a public-private partnership in 2018 under Horizon 2020 between the European Union (EU), European Countries (currently 32) and private partners with the aim to develop an excellent supercomputing ecosystem in Europe. Switzerland has been a member since March 2019. In the course of 2019, eight sites in eight different countries were chosen for supercomputing centres hosting new machines. Subsequently, the signature of respective agreements marked a milestone in EuroHPC (see SwissCore article). Under the current multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2019-2020, the EuroHPC JU was funded with €1.5 bn.
The new regulation will set the conditions and rules for participation to establish EuroHPC as a European public-private partnership according to Article 187 under the Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in the upcoming budgetary period 2021-2027 and under the new European knowledge programmes. EuroHPC will receive funding through the next framework programme for research and innovation, Horizon Europe as well as the Digital Europe Programme and the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). With the announced €8 bn, its budget will be substantially larger than the current one.
EuroHPC will continue to build its activities around five pillars: an interconnected supercomputing infrastructure, the federating of services, research and development of new HPC technologies and architecture, applications in the industrial, scientific and public sector, education and training for HPC skills and a leadership in HPC use. The new regulation, replacing the previous Council Regulation from 2018, will enable Europe to stay in the race towards the next supercomputing frontier. This includes preparing the ground for and deploying exascale supercomputers based on European technology that can perform more than one billion operations per second, as well as creating quantum and hybrid computers, which combine elements of the quantum and classical computing worlds. Supercomputing services shall become accessible to a plethora of users across the continent including industry, the public sector and in particular small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Two years after its establishment, on 24 September, EuroHPC also announced that it would from now on be solely responsible for its operations and have the capacity to implement its own budget. Before, it was operated directly by the European Commission. The EuroHPC Governing Board on this day appointed Anders Dam Jensen as an Executive Director. Jensen is the new legal representative of the Joint Undertaking and responsible for its day-to-day management in accordance with the decisions of the Governing Board. The EC for its part will remain a member of the Governing Board keeping 50% of all votes. The EuroHPC now thus has an excellent base to move on towards a successful future full steam.