Open Call to Support HPC-powered Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications

The objective of this call, DIGITAL-EUROHPC-JU-2023-AISC-03 is to establish an AI Support Centre (AISC) to pool specialist knowledge in advanced AI technologies and to provide  HPC-based services to developers and users of large-scale AI models. The centre will support communities to overcome existing barriers currently limiting the adoption of large-scale AI models in science and industry sectors across Europe. The AISC will serve as a single access point to Europe’s most advanced HPC infrastructures and competences for the development and training of large-scale AI models.

The support centre will enable European AI communities to scale up their AI workflows by harnessing state-of-the-art supercomputing resources, to develop complex models with significant impact throughout Europe, including foundation models for generative AI. The initiative is expected to drive European innovation and boost science as large-scale AI models have the potential to impact various sectors, from natural language processing to astrophysics, climate modeling, medicine and biotechnology to name a few. 

The Centre will build upon existing support services provided, for example, by the pan-European network of EuroHPC National Competence Centres (NCCs).  In the domain of advanced HPC-based AI technology, the AISC will significantly enhance the existing service portfolio currently available to researchers and businesses in Europe.

More details

This call DIGITAL-EUROHPC-JU-2023-AISC-03 is open for submissions until 27 February 2024, 17:00 (CET). 

The call is funded by Digital Europe Programme (DEP), an EU funding programme focused on bringing digital technology to businesses, citizens and public administrations, with a total budget up to EUR 5 million.  

The selected projects are expected to start in September 2024 for a duration of 36 months.  

More details and all relevant documents concerning the call are available on the EU Funding & tender opportunities portal and in the EuroHPC JU website. 

Background

The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is supporting the development of AI applications in HPC and several AI projects have already successfully used EuroHPC JU supercomputers.

Moreover, on 16^th November 2023, the European Commission, in collaboration with the JU,  launched the AI Grand Challenge to foster innovation and excellence in large-scale AI models and provide successful applicants with access to the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI and Leonardo to research, innovate and development novel AI solutions.

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a legal and funding entity created in 2018 to enable the European Union, EuroHPC participating countries and private partners to coordinate their efforts and pool their resources with the objective of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.

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.  Three of these EuroHPC supercomputers are now ranked among the world’s top 10 most powerful supercomputers: LUMI in Finland, Leonardo in Italy and MareNostrum 5 in Spain.

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.