EuroHPC

EuroHPC
Name	EuroHPC Joint Undertaking
Formation	2018
Type	Research infrastructure / Public-private partnership
Headquarters	Luxembourg
Region served	European Union, Associated Countries
Leader title	Director
Leader name	Burkhard

EuroHPC

EuroHPC is a European public-private partnership established to develop and deploy exascale and pre-exascale supercomputing infrastructure across the European Union and associated countries, coordinating procurement, operation, and research efforts among EU institutions, national authorities, and industry stakeholders. The initiative links high-performance computing efforts with research institutions, technology vendors, and policy frameworks to support scientific projects, industry innovation, and strategic capacity in areas influenced by computing leadership. EuroHPC interfaces with multinational programs, funding mechanisms, and technical consortia to align investments in supercomputing, storage, interconnects, and software ecosystems.

Overview

EuroHPC coordinates procurement and operation of petascale and exascale systems by pooling resources from the European Commission, participating member states such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and associated nations like Norway and Switzerland; it partners with vendors including Atos, Lenovo, IBM, HPE, and NVIDIA to deploy systems sited at institutions such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Cineca, and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. The initiative supports research communities tied to projects funded by programs like Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, and links to agencies including the European Space Agency, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and the European Southern Observatory to enable simulations, data analysis, and modeling for disciplines represented at CERN, EMBL, ESA, ESFRI research infrastructures. EuroHPC's constellation of centers connects to national initiatives such as Gauss Centre for Supercomputing, PRACE, and regional institutes like IT4Innovations, SURF, and CINECA to deliver resources for users from universities like University of Oxford, Sorbonne University, Technical University of Munich, ETH Zurich, and corporations like Siemens, Airbus, TotalEnergies.

History and development

EuroHPC was formally launched in 2018 following strategic discussions in venues including the European Parliament, European Council, and policy agendas influenced by reports from entities like the High-Level Expert Group on European HPC and standards groups tied to ISO and IEEE. Early agreements involved ministries from countries such as Portugal, Poland, Belgium, and Greece, and procurement phases engaged consortia led by companies like Cray and research centers like PRACE. Major milestones include procurement of pre-exascale machines situated at centers including BSC, CINECA, and JSC, and subsequent roadmaps that referenced technologies championed by firms like Intel, AMD, ARM Holdings, Graphcore, and accelerator ecosystems from NVIDIA. Political drivers included strategic autonomy discussions in forums like G7, G20, and security analyses by agencies such as ENISA and policy think-tanks including Bruegel and ECFR that shaped investment levels during multiannual financial frameworks and recovery plans.

Infrastructure and supercomputers

EuroHPC systems range from petascale clusters to planned exascale machines built with processors and accelerators supplied by Intel Xeon, AMD EPYC, and NVIDIA A100 or successor GPUs, integrated with high-speed interconnects like InfiniBand (vendors Mellanox), custom network fabrics from Cray or HPE Cray, and storage solutions from DDN Storage and NetApp. Notable centers operate systems sited at institutions such as the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, CINECA, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, CSC – IT Center for Science (Finland), and SURFsara; these installations support applications developed at Max Planck Society institutes, CNRS, INRIA, Fraunhofer Society, and university consortia including University of Cambridge and Karolinska Institute. Benchmarks and rankings intersect with lists like the TOP500, Green500, and software stacks from OpenMPI, SLURM, Kubernetes, Singularity and scientific codes such as GROMACS, LAMMPS, Quantum ESPRESSO, WRF, and OpenFOAM.

Governance and funding

Governance uses a joint undertaking legal framework under EU regulation with a governing board comprising representatives from the European Commission, participating countries, and private partners including companies like Atos and IBM; advisory bodies involve stakeholders from PRACE, national research agencies such as ANR (France), DFG (Germany), MIUR (Italy), and funding decisions align with instruments like the Multiannual Financial Framework and recovery funding mechanisms influenced by European Investment Bank activities. Funding combines contributions from member states, EU budget commitments, and in-kind contributions from industry partners, with procurement processes run under EU public procurement rules and technical evaluations involving standards bodies such as CEN and IEEE.

Research, applications, and collaborations

EuroHPC enables work in computational fields used by projects at CERN, ESA, EMBL-EBI, ECMWF, and climate consortia like IPCC groups; user communities include teams from Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), and industry R&D labs at Siemens Healthineers and BMW. Collaborations extend to international partners like PRACE, NSF-funded centers in the United States, Japan's initiatives involving Riken, and alliances with standards and open-source communities such as Linux Foundation, OpenMP, MPI Forum, and Kubernetes. Application domains include simulations for projects related to ITER, drug discovery efforts linked to EMBL, earth system modeling for ECMWF campaigns, and data analytics for experiments at CERN.

Challenges and future directions

Challenges include supply-chain dependencies involving manufacturers like TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and geopolitical risks tied to export controls debated in forums such as the Wassenaar Arrangement and discussions in World Trade Organization contexts; technical constraints involve energy consumption concerns addressed with partners like European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity and efficiency benchmarking via Green500. Future directions emphasize exascale deployments, closer ties to semiconductor initiatives like the European Chips Act, enhanced software ecosystems fostered by projects funded under Horizon Europe, and strategic collaborations with research infrastructures such as ESFRI, industry consortia, and standards organizations including ISO, IEEE, and the Open Compute Project.

Category:High-performance computing