(by Davide Maniscalco, Aidr Regional Coordinator for Sicily, Privacy Officer and Head of Institutional Relations Swascan - Tinexta Group) The Board today adopted a regulation establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC).
The regulation thus paves the way for the development of the next generation of supercomputers in Europe.
The Joint Undertaking aims to develop, implement, extend and maintain a federated, secure and hyper-connected ecosystem of supercomputing, quantum computing, as well as global data services and infrastructures in the EU.
The regulation will allow for the continuation of the activities of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, indeed already established in October 2018, and will bring together the resources of the EU, 27 Member States, 6 other countries and 2 private members, namely the European Technology Platform for HPC and the Big Data Value Associations.
The measure adopted, which already takes into account recent technological developments, such as quantum computing, will contribute to the strengthening of the EU's strategic autonomy and to the creation of the European Research Area aimed at making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.
Indeed, the regulation strengthens research and innovation capacities, the development of an ecosystem of supercomputing infrastructures and the acquisition of world-class supercomputers through the joint venture.
This makes it possible to extend the use of the supercomputing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users.
In addition, the regulatory measure, although it tends to develop key competences for European science and industry, nevertheless maintains general consistency with the EU's priority green and digital transition objectives.
High Performance Computing refers to computing systems ("supercomputers") with extremely high computing power, capable of solving particularly complex problems, will allow further exploitation of key technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and cybersecurity to exploit the enormous potential of the so-called data driven economy.
The European Commission's proposal was presented in September 2020 and the Council agreed on a general approach in May 2021.
The new regulation has been aligned with the EU multiannual financial framework for the years 2021-2027, thus allowing EUoroHPC to use funding from the EU programs, Horizon Europe, Digital Europe and Connecting Europe Facility.