EuroCC 2
EuroCC2, the full name being the National Competence Centres in the framework of EuroHPC Phase 2, is another project supporting EuroHPC – a joint venture of 33 European countries and the European Commission (EuroHPC JU). The goal of this initiative is to enhance and equalise the level of advanced computing capabilities (High Performance Computing) for the needs of science, industry, and public administration in Europe. This is to be achieved through the development of the HPC ecosystem, which will include, on the one hand, an exascale computing infrastructure and, on the other hand, a support system for specialised knowledge, skills, and experience.
The objective of the EuroCC2 project is to further develop the activities of National Competence Centres in HPC in each of the participating countries. These centres will consolidate the potential of all supercomputer centers in a given country and facilitate the provision of their services to users from universities, scientific institutions, the industrial sector, and public administration. A key aspect of the project is also the transfer of knowledge regarding the use of supercomputers, increasing collaboration, exchanging best practices and knowledge at the European level, and accelerating the improvement of national, and consequently European, HPC service capabilities.
This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101101903. The JU receives support from the Digital Europe Programme and Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Norway, Türkiye, Republic of North Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia
EuroCC 1
With funding from the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), EuroCC and CASTIEL will build a European network of 33 national HPC competence centres. The two projects will bridge the existing HPC skills gaps while promoting cooperation and the implementation of best practices across Europe.
Starting on 1st September 2020, the project EuroCC will run for a 2-year period with a total budget of €57 million. Half of the budget comes from Horizon 2020, the Research and Innovation funding programme of the EU, while the other half will come from the 33 participating countries.
CASTIEL (Coordination and Support for National Competence Centres on a European Level) will also run for a 2-year period, from 1st September 2020, with an extra Horizon 2020 funding of €2 million.
The two projects have been selected following the call EuroHPC-04-2019 and will be coordinated by the High-Performance Computing Centre Stuttgart (HLRS), one of the member of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS).
The EuroHPC JU was established by Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1488 in 2018. 32 European countries are currently taking part in the initiative and pooling their resources with the EU and private partners to enable the EU to become a world leader in supercomputing.
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 aims at equipping the EU in 2021 with an infrastructure of petascale (capable of at least 1015 calculations per second) and precursor to exascale supercomputers (capable of at least 1017calculations per second), and developing the necessary technologies and applications for reaching full exascale capabilities around 2022 / 2023.
More information can be found on the EuroHPC JU’s website.