EuroHPC JU to collaborate with the European Commission to launch a competition to support AI and HPC communities

Today, on the occasion of the fourth AI Alliance Assembly held In Madrid, the European Commission has launched a new call, the ‘AI Grand Challenge’,  in collaboration with EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. 

This competition is designed to foster innovation and excellence in large-scale AI models. The winning projects will be awarded GPU hours on Leonardo or LUMI supercomputers, together with a €1 million prize to be shared among the winners. The competition is the result of the collaboration between the EuroHPC JU and the EU funded project AI-BOOST. One aspect of this call is to provide successful applicants with access to the EuroHPC supercomputers to research, innovate and development novel AI solutions.

President von der Leyen’s recent announcement during the 2023 State of the Union address declared the strategic importance for the European Union of supporting transparent and responsible AI development and exploiting Europe’s recent achievements in HPC to foster and guide innovation in AI.

EuroHPC JU will facilitate access for AI communities to its world-class supercomputing infrastructure. Guaranteeing such access will allow the growing European AI Community as well as the research and industrial communities to leverage both HPC resources and novel AI technologies to accelerate innovation and research.

EuroHPC JU is already supporting the development of AI applications in HPC. It has already granted access time on its supercomputers to several AI projects through its Access Calls, and organised an Information Day on HPC for AI to address how EuroHPC supercomputing resources can be harnessed for AI applications.   

EuroHPC JU’s ongoing HPC and AI initiatives include:  

•  A review of its access policy to it European supercomputing infrastructure

 EuroHPC JU access policy was approved by the Governing Board in 2021 and will be updated to improve evaluation steps to provide access to AI projects and ethical evaluation procedures. 

• A call to provide HPC support to develop the competitiveness and innovation potential of SMEs

 This call aims to provide access to European SMEs to advanced HPC capabilities with a focus on leveraging AI technologies to drive innovation, enhance competitiveness, and overcome challenges in the digitisation of R&D and business processes.  

• A call for a Support Centre for HPC-powered AI applications

This upcoming call will establish an operational HPC-AI support centre to provide services for AI users and developers, supporting their uptake and utilisation of HPC resources, providing essential training in HPC skills, and divulging key knowledge on HPC architectures and requirements for training large-scale AI models. 

Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, stated:  

"The European HPC and AI communities have much to gain from working hand in hand, and I am very pleased that the EuroHPC JU can support the synergies and collaboration between the two ecosystems. I look forward to the outcome of this innovative Challenge which will foster European excellence in large-scale AI models". 

The deadline to submit application for the AI Grand Challenge has been extended to 13 February 2024 [5PM CET].

Related Links 

·       EC’s Press release link 

·       More information on how to participate to the AI Grand Challenge 

·       European Commission High-Performance Computing 

·       A European Approach to Artificial Intelligence 

·       The European AI Alliance 

Background 

The EuroHPC JU is a legal and funding entity, created in 2018 and reviewed in 2021 by means of Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173, with the mission 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.   

In order to equip Europe with a world-leading supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured nine supercomputers, located across Europe. No matter where in Europe they are located, European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from these EuroHPC supercomputers, which rank among the world’s most powerful.  

In parallel, the EuroHPC JU is funding an ambitious research and innovation programme to develop a full European supercomputing supply chain: from processors and software to applications to be run on these supercomputers and know-how to develop strong European expertise.