Call on HPC Innovation for European SMEs

The project FF4EuroHPC launched its first open call to support European SMEs in making the most of advanced High Performance Computing (HPC) services. Funded by the European Union and supervised by the European HPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), the project aims at boosting the innovation potential and competitiveness of SMEs, while widening the use of HPC in Europe.

The FF4EuroHPC Call-1 will support European SMEs wanting to benefit from the use of advanced HPC services, such as modelling & simulation, data analytics, machine-learning and Artificial Intelligence, to develop innovative products and services, and exploit new business opportunities. The call invites proposals addressing different application domains, with preference being given to engineering and manufacturing, or sectors able to demonstrate fast economic growth or particular economic impact for Europe. Priority will be given to consortia centred on SMEs that are new to the use of advanced HPC services.

A total budget of EUR 3 million is foreseen for this call, with a maximum funding allocation of EUR 200 000 per proposal. It will address experiments executing for a 15-month period, with expected commencement in June 2021.

Proposals should be submitted at the latest by 27th January 2021, 17:00 Brussels time, in electronic form using the proposal submission tool. More details on the call and its specifications are available on the open call section of the FF4EuroHPC website and on the Funding and tenders portal of the European Commission. Interested SMEs with an HPC-centered business concept may also contact their responsible National Competence Centre for further information and advice. 

About FF4EuroHPC

The project FF4EuroHPC started in September 2020 for a 3-year period, as a successor of the EU-funded projects Fortissimo and Fortissimo 2. Two FF4EuroHPC open calls are scheduled through the project's lifetime. 

The project is funded by Horizon 2020, the Research and Innovation funding programme of the EU, with a total budget of EUR 9.9 million. It has been selected following the call H2020-JTI-EuroHPC-2019-2. FF4EuroHPC is coordinated by the University of Stuttgart and involves 5 other partners: Scapos AG, Teratec, CINECA, CESGA and Arctur.

About EuroHPC

The EuroHPC JU was established by Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1488  in 2018. 32 European countries are currently taking part in the initiative and pooling their resources with the EU and private partners to enable the EU to become a world leader in supercomputing.

The mission of the EuroHPC JU is to develop, deploy, extend and maintain an integrated world-class supercomputing and data infrastructure in the EU and to develop and support a highly competitive and innovative HPC ecosystem.

The EuroHPC JU aims at equipping the EU in 2021 with an infrastructure of petascale and precursor to exascale supercomputers, and developing the necessary technologies and applications for reaching full exascale capabilities around 2022 / 2023.