HPC Competence Centres

This topic covers two interrelated and complementary areas:

a. National HPC Competence Centres – The aim is to support existing or the creation in a maximum number of countries of up to one national HPC Competence Centre in each of the EU Member States and EuroHPC JU Participating States. The national HPC Competence Centres should provide HPC services to industry (including to SMEs), academia and public administrations, delivering tailored /modular solutions for a wide variety of users, with an aim to ease and foster the transition towards wider uptake of HPC in Europe. It should be the focal point coordinating all national initiatives, facilitating access of national stakeholders to European HPC competence and opportunities in different industrial sectors and domains.

b. Networking and coordination of national HPC Competence Centres with the aim to maximize existing European HPC knowledge and expertise across Europe. The tasks and services of the network will be to establish a single focal point at European level, that will be responsible for the coordination of the national Competence Centres, the exchange of best practices, know-how and information, networking and training across national HPC Competence Centres.

Scope

a. Research and Innovation Actions

Set-up and operate one HPC Competence Centre in a maximum number of countries of each of the EU Member States and EuroHPC JU Participating States, associated to the national supercomputing centres. The HPC Competence Centre should provide leading-edge, innovative solutions taking into account national HPC needs and requirements emanating from different users (industry, academia, public administrations), and develop the necessary expertise and applications know-how close to the users. National HPC Competence Centres should implement a flexible and modular approach in the services to be provided, taking into account the degree of maturity of the national HPC infrastructure.

HPC Competence Centres should provide for example services such as:

• Facilitate uptake of HPC applications by different users, including SMEs (e.g. promoting locally relevant success stories), academia and public administrations.
• Facilitate access to scientific/technical expertise/consulting through application oriented HPC know-how/focus (e.g. HPC and High Performance Data Analytics (HPDA)), as well as access to advanced simulation and modelling algorithms, software codes and tools.
• Onsite evaluations of new technologies, experimenting, proof of concept, facilitating access to the HPC ecosystem including testbeds, hands-on sessions on HPC and, HPC application optimising and scaling in a number of fields.
• Facilitate access to supercomputing and data management for exploring innovation solutions of interest to end users, including SME user industries.
• Local and national training and skills development in the area of HPC and related subjects (e.g. HPDA, parallel programming, etc.), through face-to-face as well as online training (e.g. MOOC platforms).
• Awareness raising and outreach on the benefits of HPC to potential user industries, including SMEs.
• Implementing technology transfer activities at local/national level and the Digital Single Market.

It is required that the national HPC Competence Centre – consisting of either one or several national organisations - is formally designated and mandated by the national authorities of the EU Member State or the EuroHPC JU Participating State.

The JU considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the JU of up to EUR 1 million per national HPC Competence Centres[1], matched by the Participating States with a similar amount, and a duration of 2 years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals with another duration or requesting other amounts. Only one proposal including a maximum number of national HPC Competence Centres will be selected.

b. Coordination and Support Action

Proposals should aim at coordinating the national HPC Competence Centres. In particular, it is expected to establish a communication platform, facilitate dialogue, promote the objectives of the HPC Competence Centres and organize outreach events and workshops (on topics identified by the national HPC Competence Centres). It is expected to identify potential training solutions and tools available from the HPC Competence Centres network to support and assist national HPC Competence Centres requests and/or needs and help networking of respective national and European activities including through the provision of mentoring and twinning schemes.

Proposals should address all the following points:

• coordinate and be a reference point for national HPC initiatives ensuring the exchange of best practice and information across Europe;
• ensure that the specific “vertical” expertise and solutions of each national Competence Centre provide coordinated support on a local level to other Competence Centres, facilitating cross-domain expertise and share effective solutions for industry, academia and the public sector;
• coordinate centrally mentoring and twinning programmes with the aim to accelerate the development of ‘new’ HPC Competence Centres and build strong collaborations across HPC Competence Centres with similar interests;
• sharing of existing libraries of HPC codes and, inter alia facilitate access to upgraded HPC application codes in order to encourage mutual learning and strive towards reaching a uniform maturity level across HPC Competence Centres and help close the gap between experienced and less experienced countries.

It is expected that such an activity be driven by the relevant actor(s) bringing in the required expertise and a solid and robust track-record in offering HPC Competence Centre related services to a variety of users including industry, as well as HPC-related training activities at European level.

The JU considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 2 million and a duration of 2 years would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting another duration or other amounts. Only one proposal will be selected.

a. Research and Innovation Action

• Contribution to the realisation of the EuroHPC overall and specific objectives[2]
• Promoting the use of HPC at national level by identifying relevant users and matching their needs with the available expertise in the HPC Competence Centres
• Effective establishment of a wide range of HPC services (as referred in the scope of this objective)
• Provision of leading-edge, innovative solutions for targeted regional/national industries/ applications
• Provision of support to interested end users that are/will use HPC and HPDA in their daily business
• Contribute in ensuring European technological autonomy in this field

b. Coordination and Support Action

• Contribution to the realisation of the EuroHPC overall and specific objectives[2]
• Effective coordination and exchange of best practices and information among the networked HPC Competence Centres
• Facilitate access to services and training offered at national level to interested HPC Competence Centres and other potential users (from industry, academia or public sector)
• Maximise visibility and outreach of national HPC Competence Centres, in particular to industry
• Improved coordination and increased availability of training activities on HPC across HPC Competence Centres

[1]Please refer to the Annex of the Work Plan for the funding rate and the national contribution to this topic

[2]Council Regulation 2018/1488 of 28 September 2018 establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/documents/Regulation.pdf

[3]Council Regulation 2018/1488 of 28 September 2018 establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/documents/Regulation.pdf

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