EC: invest €1 billion in world-class European supercomputers

The Council of Ministers officially backed the Commission's plans to invest jointly with the Member States in building a world-class European supercomputing infrastructure. Supercomputers are needed to process ever larger amounts of data. They bring benefits to society in many areas, from health care and renewable energy to car safety and cybersecurity.

The Competitiveness Council adopted a Regulation to establish the European High Performance Computing (EuroHPC) Joint Undertaking – a new legal and funding structure, which will pool resources from 25 European countries, build supercomputing and data infrastructure, and support research and innovation in the field involving scientists, businesses and industry. This structure will give European public and private users better access to supercomputing which is essential to support competitiveness and innovation.

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking will be established in November 2018 and remain operational until the end of 2026. The cooperation is crucial for the EU's competitiveness and independence in the data economy, as industry in the EU currently consumes over 33% of supercomputing resources worldwide, but supplies only 5% of them.

The Joint Undertaking will have a budget of €1 billion: half from the EU budget and half from participating European Member States. Additional resources to the value of over €400 million will come from private partners.

Read the Full Press release of 28 September 2018