Poland joins the international supercomputing undertaking

The European High-Perfomance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) will pool European resources to develop top-of-the-range exascale supercomputers and enable European Union countries to compete with global leaders in this area - the U.S., China and Japan. The EuroHPC program will launch in 2019.

"Poland`s joining the EuroHPC will not only contribute to the internationalisation of Polish science and improve the quality of research, it can also have positive effects for the Polish economy" - the Ministry of Science and Higher Education release reads. Minister of Science and Higher Education, Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin signed the declaration last week in Warsaw.

"By signing the HPC declaration we declare our commitment to become a Member State of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking once it is established. HPC is a very dynamic R&D domain, which becomes crucial for development of European science and business communities. Supercomputing makes it possible to reduce the costs of doing research and technology deployment, providing for quicker response to global challenges" - emphasised Gowin, quoted in the release.

According to the Ministry of Science, HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems belong to the key instruments for the development of science and innovation in the digital era. Large-scale calculations include modelling and simulation, advanced data analysis and visualization, which are used in data processing for many applications - scientific, medical, industrial and business. They are also used in the public sector, for example in research on climate and natural disasters, and in cybersecurity.

According to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the initiative will be based on two main pillars. The first will be the purchase of the HPC infrastructure and data infrastructure, and then the commissioning, operation and provision of access to this infrastructure to public and private users. The second pillar is an HPC research and innovation program: creating software and applications for HPC systems and developing advanced digital skills to make the best use of high-performance computers.

The Ministry of Science points out that in addition to acquiring computational resources needed in many fields of science, Poland`s participation in the EuroHPC initiative will result in the transfer of knowledge between countries - in particular regarding hardware, software, applications, services, engineering, interconnection, expertise and skills. "In addition, exascale computing power will be used in the economy - for example, R&D work of entrepreneurs will accelerate. This will translate into faster improvement of the current products and development of new products, their implementation and production" - reads the release.

According to the Ministry of Science, EuroHPC will take the legal form of a joint undertaking, financed from European and national funds.

The EuroHPC declaration was signed on March 23, 2017, during the Digital Day in Rome, by seven countries (France, Spain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal and Italy). The following countries later joined the signatories: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Slovenia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and recently Poland.

According to the current multiannual financial framework, the EU financial contribution to EuroHPC will amount to 486 million euros. A similar amount will be contributed by the participating countries. "In addition, financial and material contribution from private partners of EuroHPC is also expected. Work is currently underway on the regulation on the joint undertaking, which will become the basis for its establishment in 2019" - the release reads.

PAP - Science in Poland

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