Cabinet of Ministers support Latvia’s participation in EuroHPC projects
On 25 February, the Cabinet of Ministers, supporting Latvia’s participation in EuroHPCprojects, also finances the already launched EuroCC project.
In June 2018, Latvia decided to join the EuroHPC initiative, which later became EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) and agreed to co-finance the projects at 50%. The EuroHPC JU is a public-private stake partnership involving the European Commission, EU MemberStates, as well as countries associated to Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe. The JU aims to promote a world-class supercomputing (High-Performance Computing (HPC)) and the development of data infrastructure in the European Union.
EuroHPC projekts “National Competence Centres in the framework of EuroHPC” (EuroCC) sākās jau 2020. gada 1. septembrī un Latviju tajā pārstāv Rīgas Tehniskās universitātes (RTU) HPC centrs kopā ar Latvijas Universitātes Skaitliskās modelēšanas institūtu. Projekta EuroCC mērķis ir izveidot Eiropā superskaitļošanas kompetences centru tīklu. Projektā iesaistītas 33 valstis, projekts ilgs 2 gadus ar kopējo finansējumu vairāk nekā 56 milj. eiro.
The EuroHPC project “National Competence Centres in the framework of EuroHPC” (EuroCC) started already on 1 September 2020, and Latvia is represented by Riga Technical University’s HPC Center together with the Institute of Numerical Modelling of the University of Latvia. The EuroCC project aims to create a network of supercomputing competence centres in Europe. The project involves 33 countries, the project will last for 2 years with a total funding of more than EUR 56 million euros.
The competence centres established during the project will be tasked with creating a single support structure to promote the use of supercomputing opportunities in higher education, research, public administration, and industry. Competence centres will pool the competences, experience and computing resources available in all EU countries.
“We are very pleased with the decision taken by the Cabinet of Ministers. It gives us confidence in the successful achievement of the project objectives in Latvia – the creation of a Supercomputing Competence Centre SuperS”, says project manager Ilmars Slaidins. “Before the start of the project, the Ministry of Education and Science and VIAA gave us guarantees that we could make commitments and sign an agreement with EuroHPC JU. Already last year, we received part of the EU’s guaranteed funding to launch the project.”
In the last six months of the project, the Road Map of the Latvian Supercomputing Competence Centre project has already been developed, seminars and meetings with companies have been organised, experts have been involved, as well as identification of existing competences and needs has been started.
