Digital Agenda: Overview

High performance computing (HPC), also known as supercomputing, refers to computing systems with extremely high computational power that are able to solve hugely complex and demanding problems. In the digital era, HPC is at the core of major advances and innovation, and a strategic resource for Europe's future.

Launched in 2018, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking aims at making Europe a world leader in high performance computing and quantum computing.

In September 2020 the Commission set out a new ambitious mission to lead on supercomputing with a proposed regulation that includes a significantly higher budget of €8 billion.

With the current EU budget of over €1 billion for 2019-2020, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is:

• acquiring and deploying 8 new top supercomputers, worth €830 million, benefiting users including the public sector, industry and SMEs, no matter where they are located;
• 3 of these supercomputers will be in the world’s top 5, and the other 5 will be in the world’s top 50.
• supporting a research and innovation agenda, worth €370 million, to develop supercomputing hardware and software, applications and skills.

Supercomputers, also known as high-performance computing, are advanced systems capable of dealing with complex matters in health, energy, engineering, climate research and many more. It will also soon be possible to build computers that combine quantum and classical computing, able to perform large operations in parallel.

Supercomputers are a strategic asset for our society to:

• Monitor and mitigate the effects of climate change, for example with the Destination Earth initiative
• Search for new treatments e.g. a potential treatment for the coronavirus, better understand neurological disorders, and develop new medicines
• Design safer and greener cars and aircraft, reduce development time, minimise costs, and optimise decision processes in manufacturing