Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1488 of 28 September 2018 establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking

What it is

to establish a European Joint Undertaking for High Performance Computing (EuroHPC) during the period 2019-2026. ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the Council adopts the act after consulting the European Parliament but without being obliged to follow the opinion of the European Parliament. BACKGROUND: High performance computing (HPC) is an indispensable tool for addressing major scientific and societal challenges such as early detection of diseases, forecasting climate change or the prevention of natural disasters. It has an increasingly important impact on industries and businesses as it reduces design and production cycles. Lastly, it is essential for national security and defence. At present, the supercomputers available in the Union do not satisfy demand . European scientists and industry are increasingly processing their data outside the EU. This lack of independence can create problems, especially with regard to the protection of personal data and the ownership of data, in particular for sensitive applications such as health. The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy adopted the report by Zigmantas BALČYTIS (S&D, LT) on the proposal for a Council regulation on establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking. The committee recommended that Parliament approve the Commission proposal as amended. Definitions : the amended text stipulates that ‘hosting entity’ shall mean a legal entity established in a Member State participating in the Joint Undertaking which includes facilities to host and operate a petascale (10 15 calculations per second) or pre-exascale (10 17 calculations per second) supercomputer. Objectives : the Joint Undertaking shall have, inter alia , the following overall objectives: to provide scientists and researchers, industry, including start-ups, micro-enterprises, SMEs and the public sector from the Union or an Associated Country to Horizon 2020 with latest High Performance Computing and Data Infrastructure and support the development of its technologies and its applications across a wide range of fields primarily for civilian use such as healthcare, energy, smart cities, autonomous transport and space ; to provide a framework for acquisition of an integrated world-class pre-exascale supercomputing and data infrastructure in the Union, including through supporting the acquisition of petascale supercomputers ; to support the development of an integrated High Performance Computing ecosystem in the Union covering all scientific and industrial value chain segments notably hardware, software, applications, services, engineering, interconnections, know-how and skills, in order to strengthen the Union as a global centre for innovation , contributing to competitiveness and enhanced research and development capacity; to enable synergies and provide added value of cooperation between participating Member States and other actors; to liaise with existing contractual public-private partnerships with regard to High Performance Computing and big data in order to create synergies and integration; to increase the innovation potential of industry, and in particular of microenterprises and SMEs, as well as…

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