June 14, 2018 — Finland and Sweden have signed the EuroHPC declaration, joining the other European countries that are already part of this national and European effort to build together world-class high performance computing and data infrastructures in Europe.

Andrus Ansip, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, and Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, welcomed the signatures:

We are very pleased that Finland and Sweden, two very active members of PRACE, joined the EuroHPC strategic initiative.

Only by pooling our resources will we manage to acquire, build and deploy in Europe the most powerful supercomputers of the world, and to develop a leading European HPC and big data ecosystem in terms of technology, applications and skills.

The development of a world-class supercomputing infrastructure in Europe will match the demanding application requirements of a wide range of scientific and industrial users, in particular in advanced computing, big data analytics, cloud and networking resources and services. It will also allow us to boost human capital-related development activities on HPC across Europe.

These European HPC resources will allow, for example, leading edge research in electromagnetism, fluid dynamics or engine combustion, and will also enhance HPC applications like climate modelling and prediction, fusion research, fluid dynamics, or understanding the brain, serving academia and industry and ultimately the European citizens.

Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, Finnish Minister of Education said:

The increasing volume of data and new computational methods create new opportunities in science, technology and innovation, but requires up-to-date infrastructure and services.  In Finland, we are currently updating our data and high performance computing infrastructure and developing our capabilities in artificial intelligence. Signing the declaration enables us to combine national, Nordic and European efforts for the benefit of the larger research community. I am happy to sign the declaration on the same day as Sweden and looking forward to our contribution to this important European effort on high performance computing.

Helene Hellmark Knutsson, Swedish Minister of Higher Education and Research added:

The EuroHPC initiative is important. Sweden has prominent researchers within HPC, mainly in developing algorithms and software. We believe in the co-development of artificial intelligence and HPC, and want to contribute to the EuroHPC-initiative. Signing the declaration demonstrates our ambition of strengthening the European collaboration in High Performance Computing. Today, Finland is also signing the declaration. We are well coordinated and look forward to providing Nordic strength also in the EuroHPC project.

By signing the EuroHPC declaration, Finland and Sweden have each announced their support to the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) proposed by the European Commission on 11 January 2018.

The EuroHPC JU is a legal and funding entity that aims to foster a world-class High Performance Computing (HPC) ecosystem for the European Union. Joining forces at European level on HPC for processing big data is critical for meeting the growing demands of European private and public users. An integrated European HPC infrastructure will bring benefits for Europe’s leadership in science, industrial competitiveness, engineering skills and know-how, and society as whole.

The JU will pool EU and national resources with the goal of:

• acquiring and providing across Europe by 2020 a world-class pre-exascale supercomputing infrastructure, capable of a hundred million billion or 10¹⁷ calculations per second, in order to match the demanding application requirements of European academic and industrial users;
• supporting the development of European supercomputing technology, including the first generation of European low-power microprocessor technology and the co-design of European exascale machines (capable of at least a billion billion or 10¹⁸ calculations per second);
• fostering applications and skills development and the wider use of high-performance computing.

With a total budget of approximatively €1 billion, the JU is expected to start operating in 2019 and to continue to the end of 2026. Its infrastructure will be jointly owned and operated by its members. Access will be granted to all European users under fair and transparent conditions, irrespective of their location.

Background

The EuroHPC declaration was originally launched in March 2017 during the Digital Day and signed by France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Since then, Belgium, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Greece, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Poland, Lithuania and Austria have joined them.

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Source: European Commission