On Friday 20 October, Switzerland became the eleventh country to join the EuroHPC state cooperation to set up IT infrastructure capable of carrying out calculations a hundred times faster than by megascale computers at the moment (see EUROPE 11752).
The initiative, launched and signed at the Digital Days in Rome in March 2017, has been co-signed by France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Belgium (in June), Slovenia (in July) and Bulgaria (in October).
Public consultation – preliminary results
On the same day, the Commission published the results of its public consultation on high-performance calculations. three problems were raised: limited interaction between industry and the academic world, deep fragmentation in HPC programmes and Europe’s dependence on non-EU suppliers for critical technology and systems. Insufficient resources and insufficient access to HPC resources for science were problems brought up by respondents. Finally, the Commission says the majority of respondents wanted action at EU level in this domain. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)