The EuroHPC JU allows the European Union and the EuroHPC JU participating countries to coordinate their efforts and pool their resources to make Europe a world leader in supercomputing. This boosts Europe's scientific excellence and industrial strength, support the digital transformation of its economy while ensuring its technological sovereignty.
The EuroHPC JU was created in 2018, reviewed in 2021 by Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173, and amended in July 2024 by means of Council Regulation (EU) 2024/1732.
Mission
The EuroHPC JU aims to:
- develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the EU a world-leading federated, secure and hyper-connected supercomputing, quantum computing, service and data infrastructure ecosystem;
- support the development and uptake of demand-oriented and user-driven innovative and competitive supercomputing system based on a supply chain that will ensure components, technologies and knowledge limiting the risk of disruptions and the development of a wide range of applications optimised for these systems;
- widen the use of that supercomputing infrastructure to a large number of public and private users and support the development of key HPC skills for European science and industry.
- develop and operate AI Factories located around EuroHPC supercomputing facilities to support the growth of a highly competitive and innovative AI ecosystem in Europe.
Members
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is composed of public and private members:
Public members:
- the European Union (represented by the Commission),
- Member States and Associated Countries that have chosen to become members of the Joint Undertaking: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Türkiye and United Kingdom.
Private members:
- representatives from the three participating private partners, the European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (ETP4HPC), the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) and the European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC).
Budget
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is jointly funded by its members with a budget of around EUR 7 billion for the period 2021-2027.
Most of this funding comes from the current EU long-term budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF 2021-2027) with a contribution of EUR 3 billion, distributed as follows:
- EUR 1,9 billion from the Digital European Programme (DEP) to support the acquisition, deployment, upgrading and operation of the infrastructures, the federation of supercomputing services, and the widening of HPC usage and skills;
- EUR 900 million from Horizon Europe (H-E) to support research and innovation activities for developing a world-class, competitive and innovative supercomputing ecosystem across Europe;
- EUR 200 million from Connecting Europe Facility-2 (CEF-2) to improve the interconnection of HPC, quantum computing, and data resources, as well as the interconnection with the Union’s common European data spaces and secure cloud infrastructures.
The EU contribution is matched by a similar amount from the participating countries. Additionally, private members are contributing an amount of EUR 900 million.
The Joint Undertaking provides financial support in the form of procurement or research and innovation grants to participants following open and competitive calls.
Benefits of supercomputing
Supercomputing is a critical tool for understanding and responding to complex challenges and transforming them into innovation opportunities.
Benefits for citizens
Supercomputing is starting to play a key role in medicine: for discovering new drugs, developing and targeting medical therapies for the individual needs and conditions of patients experiencing cancer, cardiovascular or Alzheimer’s diseases and rare genetic disorders. Supercomputers have been actively involved in the quest for treatments for COVID-19 by testing drug candidate molecules or repositioning existing drugs for new diseases. Supercomputing is also crucial to understand the generation and evolution of epidemics and diseases.
Supercomputing is of critical importance to anticipate severe weather conditions: it can provide accurate simulations predicting the evolution of weather patterns, as well as the size and paths of storms and floods. This is key to activate early warning systems to save human lives and reduce damages to our properties and public infrastructures.
Supercomputers are also key to monitor the effects of the climate change. They do so by improving our knowledge of geophysical processes, monitoring earth resource evolution, reducing the environmental footprint of industry and society or supporting sustainable agriculture trough numerical simulations of plant growth.
Supercomputers are also vital for national security, defence and sovereignty, as they are used to increase cybersecurity and in the fight against cyber-criminality, in particular for the protection of critical infrastructures.
Benefits for industry
Supercomputing enables industrial sectors like automotive, aerospace, renewable energy and health to innovate, become more productive and to scale up to higher value products and services.
Supercomputing has a growing impact on industries and businesses by significantly reducing product design and production cycles, accelerating the design of new materials, minimising costs, increasing resource efficiency and shortening and optimising decision processes.
It paves the way to novel industrial applications: from safer and greener vehicles to more efficient photovoltaics, sustainable buildings and optimised turbines for electricity production.
In particular, the use of supercomputing over the cloud will make it easier for SMEs without the financial means to invest in in-house skills to develop and produce better products and services.
Benefits for science
Supercomputing is at the heart of the digital transformation of science. It enables deeper scientific understanding and breakthroughs in nearly every scientific field.
The applications of supercomputing in science are countless: from fundamental physics (advancing the frontiers of knowledge of matter or exploring the universe) to material sciences (designing new critical components for the pharmaceutical or energy sectors) and earth science (modelling the atmospheric and oceanic phenomena at planetary level).