The EuroHPC JU (European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking) was created in 2018 to join the European resources in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and to develop new exascale supercomputing infrastructures, technologies, and applications.
The public-private partnership aims to improve the quality of life, advance science, boost industrial competitiveness, and ensure European technological autonomy with a lead role in HPC.
On the 18th of September, the European Commission proposed a new Regulation for the EuroHPC JU to support research and innovation activities for new supercomputing technologies, systems, HPC products and quantum computing, promoting, in addition, the development of necessary skills to use of the infrastructures. The proposal of an investment of 8 billion, would permit the development of three pre-exascale systems (able to perform 10^17 calculations per second, ranking in the world’s top five supercomputers) and five petascale systems (able to perform 10^15 calculations per second). These new machines will increase by eight times the supercomputing power available at the European level.
The new regulation ensures the accessibility of the existing European supercomputing and quantum computing resources to all users across Europe. It will also include the public sector and industrial users, in particular small and medium businesses (SMEs), that do not have the in-house resources to profit from these new technologies.
In the framework of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, EUROCC and CASTIEL, are two European projects that will enable the public sector and industrial users across Europe to quickly access European supercomputing and quantum computing resources. Since September 1st, the Big Data Association, in the role of third party of CINECA,is contributing to these ambitious projects for European society.
Nowadays, High-Performance Computing is used in many fields, from scientific research to social challenges, such as the fight against climate change.
The Exscalate4Cov project is an example of how supercomputers can help scientific research towards the discovery of an effective treatment against COVID-19.
Thanks to their High-Performance Computing ability, in a few months, the EU funded consortium, consisted of Associazione Big Data and other 17 partners, has announced an important result achieved with raloxifene (https://associazionebigdata.it/2020/09/01/exscalate4cov-raloxifene-against-covid-19/). This drug is now ready to enter clinical trials, while the project is continuing to work on more than 50 billion molecules.
These results show how the supercomputing platform can help scientific research to understand better human metabolism and the immune system as well as enable substantial progress in areas like genomics, designing and testing of new drugs to fight major diseases, including cancer and viral infections.
Link to the news: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1592