NEWS
General Information
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a joint initiative between the EU, European countries and private partners to develop a World Class Supercomputing Ecosystem in Europe.
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is composed of public and private member.
Public members: the European Union (represented by the Commission), Member States and Associated Countries that have chosen to become members of the Joint Undertaking: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.
Private members: representatives from the two participating private partners, the European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (ETP4HPC) and the Big Data Value (BDVA) associations. The JU also relies on collaboration with key European actors such as PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) and GEANT (the pan-European high-speed network for research and education).
Budget
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is jointly funded by its members with a budget of around EUR 7 billion for the period 2021-2027.
Most of this funding comes from the current EU long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF 2021-2027) with a contribution of EUR 3 billion, distributed as follows:
- EUR 1,9 billion from the Digital European Programme (DEP) to support the acquisition, deployment, upgrading and operation of the infrastructures, the federation of supercomputing services, and the widening of HPC usage and skills;
- EUR 900 million from Horizon Europe (H-E) to support research and innovation activities for developing a world-class, competitive and innovative supercomputing ecosystem across Europe;
- EUR 200 million from Connecting Europe Facility-2 (CEF-2) to improve the interconnection of HPC, quantum computing, and data resources, as well as the interconnection with the Union’s common European data spaces and secure cloud infrastructures.
The EU contribution is matched by a similar amount from the participating countries. Additionally, private members are contributing an amount of EUR 900 million.
The Joint Undertaking provides financial support in the form of procurement or research and innovation grants to participants following open and competitive calls.
Benefits of supercomputing
Supercomputing is a critical tool for understanding and responding to complex challenges and transforming them into innovation opportunities.
Benefits for citizens
Supercomputing is starting to play a key role in medicine: for discovering new drugs, developing and targeting medical therapies for the individual needs and conditions of patients experiencing cancer, cardiovascular or Alzheimer’s diseases and rare genetic disorders. Supercomputers have been actively involved in the quest for treatments for COVID-19 by testing drug candidate molecules or repositioning existing drugs for new diseases. Supercomputing is also crucial to understand the generation and evolution of epidemics and diseases.
Supercomputing is of critical importance to anticipate severe weather conditions: it can provide accurate simulations predicting the evolution of weather patterns, as well as the size and paths of storms and floods. This is key to activate early warning systems to save human lives and reduce damages to our properties and public infrastructures.
Supercomputers are also key to monitor the effects of the climate change. They do so by improving our knowledge of geophysical processes, monitoring earth resource evolution, reducing the environmental footprint of industry and society or supporting sustainable agriculture trough numerical simulations of plant growth.
Supercomputers are also vital for national security, defence and sovereignty, as they are used to increase cybersecurity and in the fight against cyber-criminality, in particular for the protection of critical infrastructures.
Benefits for industry
Supercomputing enables industrial sectors like automotive, aerospace, renewable energy and health to innovate, become more productive and to scale up to higher value products and services.
Supercomputing has a growing impact on industries and businesses by significantly reducing product design and production cycles, accelerating the design of new materials, minimising costs, increasing resource efficiency and shortening and optimising decision processes.
It paves the way to novel industrial applications: from safer and greener vehicles to more efficient photovoltaics, sustainable buildings and optimised turbines for electricity production.
In particular, the use of supercomputing over the cloud will make it easier for SMEs without the financial means to invest in in-house skills to develop and produce better products and services.
Benefits for science
Supercomputing is at the heart of the digital transformation of science. It enables deeper scientific understanding and breakthroughs in nearly every scientific field.
The applications of supercomputing in science are countless: from fundamental physics (advancing the frontiers of knowledge of matter or exploring the universe) to material sciences (designing new critical components for the pharmaceutical or energy sectors) and earth science (modelling the atmospheric and oceanic phenomena at planetary level).
Budget
For the period of 2021-2023, budget of 8 billion Euros is expected.Call Information
Calls for quantum technology and related infrastructure, cloud-based reliable networks, related services for public and private use, green artificial intelligence and big data applications, pilot product infrastructures and similar related work areas for supercomputers will be announced.
Related Cluster
EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is a part of Cluster 4.
https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/