European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking: Council adopts Regulation
Today the Council adopted a regulation on establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC). The regulation paves the way for the development within Europe of the next generation of supercomputers.
Today’s decision contributes to the EU’s strategic autonomy and delivery of the European Research Area. The goal is clear: to make Europe a world-leading actor in super computing. It will help tackle global challenges and help ensure the EU's green and digital transitions.
Simona Kustec - Minister for Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia
The regulation strengthens research and innovation capabilities, the development of a supercomputing infrastructure ecosystem and the acquisition of world-class supercomputers by means of a joint undertaking. This makes it possible to widen the use of the supercomputing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users. It also supports the green and digital transitions, and the development of key skills for European science and industry.
The new regulation has been aligned to the EU’s multiannual financial framework for the years 2021-2027, thus making it possible for the joint undertaking to use funding from EU programmes, such as Horizon Europe, Digital Europe and the Connecting Europe Facility. In addition, it takes into account recent technological developments, such as quantum computing.
Background
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking aims at developing, deploying, extending and maintaining in the EU a world-leading federated, secure and hyper-connected supercomputing, quantum computing, service and data infrastructure ecosystem. The regulation allows for the continuation of the activities of the existing EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, established in October 2018 and pooling resources from the EU, the 27 Member States, 6 other countries, and 2 Private Members: the European Technology Platform for HPC and the Big Data Value Associations.
High Performance Computing refers to computing systems (‘supercomputers’) with extremely high computational power that are able to solve hugely complex and demanding problems. It enables key technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and cybersecurity to exploit the enormous potential of the big data economy.
The Commission’s proposal was tabled in September 2020, and the Council agreed on a General Approach in May 2021.