A National Competence Centre for High-Performance Computing Technology to be established in Slovakia
Within the EuroCC and CASTIEL projects, a European network of 33 national competence centres for HPC will be created. The projects are funded by EuroHPC JU. These two projects aim to correct the main drawbacks of skills gaps in the field of HPC while supporting cooperation and the implementation of best practices in Europe.
The national competence centres will be part of the EuroCC network and will work at the local level with the aim to examine available competences in the field of HPC and to identify knowledge gaps.
The competence centres will coordinate HPC expertise at the national level to facilitate access to European HPC opportunities for scientific and research users, the public sector and industry. The competence centres will also provide solutions tailored to a wide range of users.
A National Competence Centre for HPC will be established in Slovakia.
This project aims to provide computing capacity to academic institutions, public administration organisations, but also small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as to create a team of experts, educational and information program, as well as platforms for using HPC for the Slovak public sector. The Centre will also make it possible to build further partnerships in the European HPC ecosystem.
The Centre of Operations SAS - Computing Centre is working on the creation of a competence centre in cooperation with the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic.
CASTIEL will support cooperation and exchange of expertise throughout the whole EuroCC network. Within the project, a new Europe-wide competence map, which will contain information on available resources, as well as knowledge gaps of all competence centres, will be created. The project will support potential cooperation, exchange of best practices, sharing of knowledge and expertise at an international level in order to eliminate knowledge gaps. CASTIEL will coordinate activities such as workshops, “twinning” partnerships and working groups aimed to solve common issues.
The main goal of the projects is to ensure a coordinated and overall high level of expertise in Europe, not only in the field of HPC, but also in related fields, such as high-performance data analytics or artificial intelligence. Such European knowledge and expertise are crucial to strengthening Europe's technological independence and competitiveness.
EuroHPC JU was established by Regulation of the Council of the European Union 2018/1488 as of September 28, 2018, which institutes the joint undertaking for European high-performance computing technology.
32 European countries currently partake in the initiative combining their resources with the EU and private partners to make the EU a world leader in the field of supercomputing.
The mission of the EuroHPC joint undertaking is to develop, expand and maintain a world-class integrated supercomputing and data infrastructure in the EU, as well as the development and support of a highly competitive and innovative HPC ecosystem.
The EuroHPC joint undertaking aims to equip the EU in 2021 with a petascale infrastructure (capable of performing at least 1015 calculations per second) that will be a preparation for exascale supercomputers (capable of performing at least 1018 calculations per second) and to develop the necessary technologies and applications to achieve the full range of exascale capabilities around the years 2022-2023.
The duration of the CASTIEL project (coordination and support of national competence centres at European level) is also scheduled to September 1, 2020, for a two-year period, with additional funding from the EU Horizon 2020 framework program in the amount of EUR 2 million.
Two projects have been selected under the EuroHPC-04-2019 call and will be coordinated by HLRS, one of the members of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing.
Project duration: from September 1, 2020, for two years.
Overall budget: € 57 million
Half of the funding is from the EU's Horizon 2020 framework program, and the other half will come from the resources of participating countries.
More information can be found at the EuroHPC JU website
Text: Halyna Hyryavets, The Centre of Operations SAS - Computing Centre