High-performance computing is key to the digitisation of industry and the data economy. Its many practical applications will provide benefits to a wide range of industrial and business sectors, as well as to users from academia, scientific communities and the public sector.
EuroHPC will oversee the pooling of resources within Europe to develop supercomputers for processing big data, which is essential for addressing current major scientific and societal challenges. The Luxembourg-based entity will manage around €1 billion of public funds that will be invested in the initiative between now and 2020. €486 million will be provided by the EU, while the rest will come from the Member States and associated countries that are part of the initiative.
A public-private partnership
The European high-performance computing (“EuroHPC”) joint undertaking will take the form of a public-private partnership. It will provide a legal, contractual and organisational framework to its members. The members of the joint undertaking will be the EU, individual EU countries, third-party countries associated with the Horizon 2020 programme and private associations.
Originating from an initiative by Luxembourg, EuroHPC is based on an agreement signed in March 2017 between Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands. Since then, Belgium, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Greece and Croatia.
Luxembourg at the forefront
The European Commission’s decision to locate EuroHPC in Luxembourg was welcomed by Prime Minister and Minister of State Xavier Bettel. “This confirms the attractiveness of Luxembourg as an innovative country,” said the Prime Minister. “The means deployed at the national level are aligned with the Digital Luxembourg initiative, and Luxembourg is ready to once again play a precursory, constructive and participatory role in the implementation of Europe’s digital strategy.”
While waiting for the implementation of the European HPC network, Luxembourg will acquire its own supercomputer already in 2019. This supercomputer, which will benefit from a European co-funding of 35%, will later on be connected to the global EuroHPC network.