May 4, 2021 — The headquarters of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has officially been inaugurated in Luxembourg. Minister of Foreign and European Affairs Jean Asselborn, Minister of the Economy Franz Fayot, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton, Chair of the EuroHPC JU Governing Board Dr Herbert Zeisel, and Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU Anders Dam Jensen were in attendance to open the new premises.

Jean Asselborn, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, said: “I am particularly proud that the choice fell, quite naturally, on Luxembourg, heart of the European Union’s digital hub, to host the seat of the EuroHPC JU. In its double capacity as member and host state of the EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg will continue to support this promising initiative, which ensures the competitiveness of the EU in the development of the digital economy in Europe and to position Europe as a world leader in the field of high performance computing.”

Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, said: “I am delighted that the headquarters of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking are finally being inaugurated today. I thank the Luxembourg authorities for providing us with this beautiful headquarters. It is from here that we will pursue our ambitious mission to provide Europe with a world-leading hyper-connected supercomputing and quantum computing infrastructure, which will be easily and securely accessible from anywhere in Europe.”

In addition to hosting the EuroHPC headquarters, Luxembourg is getting a supercomputer called “MeluXina”, which is co-financed by European funds and will be part of the European network of seven supercomputers already procured. Hosted in LuxConnect’s DC2 data centre in Bissen, MeluXina will be operational shortly and will be the second European supercomputer to be activated after Vega, in Slovenia.

The EuroHPC JU headquarters are located in the Technopolis Gasperich building, in Cloche d’Or. The EuroHPC JU staff is made up today of a team of 15 highly dedicated colleagues. The team is expected to grow significantly with the new regulation coming into force at the end of 2021.

Background

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking was established in 2018 by the Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1488 to enable the EU to become a world leader in supercomputing. A new regulation is currently being discussed at EU level and is expected to enter into force in next months.

The mission of the EuroHPC JU is to develop, deploy, extend and maintain an integrated world-class supercomputing and data infrastructure in the EU and to develop and support a highly competitive and innovative HPC ecosystem.

The EuroHPC JU is equipping the EU with an infrastructure of petascale and precursor to exascale supercomputers, and developing the necessary technologies, applications and skills for reaching full exascale capabilities by 2023.

Since its creation, the EuroHPC JU was operating under the supervision of the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission (DG CNECT). Following the JU’s autonomy, the European Commission remains member of the EuroHPC Governing Board (50% of all votes) but ceased to be involved in the JU’s daily business operations.

The Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, Mr. Jensen is the legal representative of the Joint Undertaking and the chief executive responsible for its day-to-day management in accordance with the decisions of the Governing Board.

The press release of the Luxembourg government can be found here: https://gouvernement.lu/fr/actualites/toutes_actualites/communiques/2021/05-mai/03-asselborn-fayot-breton.html

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Source: EuroHPC JU