The European Commission is continuing with its efforts to help Europe compete with the US in the data intensive computing field. On Thursday 11 January, it presented a draft regulation to set up a European supercomputer body. According to its calculations, this project would cost around €1 billion, with half the costs being financed by the member states and the other half through the European budget (see EUROPE 11931).
High-performance computing helps process a significant volume of data through supercomputers. The Commission explains that this technology can help to improve forecasts of large-scale natural disasters, develop new medicines or even fight against terrorism by detecting suspect behaviour in the public arena.
In 2012, the EU had 4 out of 10 of the most highly performing computing machines in the world but it now only has one. The fastest supercomputer in Europe is now in 14th position and is 12 times slower than the fastest super computer in the world.
Objective: allocate €1 billion envelope
According to the Commission, this lagging behind is due to the current lack of funding which is “between €500 and €750 million a year”. In this context, the draft regulation suggests mobilising €486 million from the current "Horizon 2020" programme to develop a cutting-edge European body. The Commission is calling on the member states to put their hands in their pocket too, to the tune of a total amount of €1 billion.
Asked about the modalities for calculating national financial contributions, Commission experts referred to a flexible payment key and “investment for acquiring an appropriate system of computers". In practice, all the member states will be able to access supercomputers because they will have been partially acquired with European money. Nonetheless, national contributions will help the states obtain privileged access of “shares" in the system.
One expert indicated, "We are hoping that the member states will all contribute to this project, which represents genuine added value, given the level of industrial scientific demand".
Broader timeframe
The 'EuroHPC' joint undertaking is expected to begin its activities in 2019 and continue them until 2026 (see EUROPE 11845). The Commission is hoping that the EU will acquire pre-exascale performance systems (1017 or 100 million billion calculations per second) by 2019-2020 followed by exascale performance systems, (i.e. at least 1018 or 1 billion billion calculations per second), which is expected to be reached around 2021-2022. This could lead to a massive explosion in industrial patent applications, points out one observer.
So far (Since March 2017) 12-member states (France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece and Croatia) in addition to Switzerland, have co-signed a joint declaration in which they make a commitment to working together.
According to a Commission expert, the United Kingdom expressed interest in this kind of collaboration, during a preparatory meeting in October. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)