Seven Countries for the Europen HPC
On 23 March 2017, Ministers from seven European countries have signed in Rome a declaration to support the next generation of computing and data infrastructures and support Europe’s leadership in HPC.
The objective is to develop a supercomputing network to interconnect and coordinate the 21 supercomputers already operating in Europe.
Signing this declaration, the ministers committed to implement the next generation of computing and data infrastructures, a European project of the size of Airbus in the 1990s and of Galileo in the 2000s. This infrastructure will also support European scientific cloud, offering 1,700,000 researchers and about 70 million science and technology professionals in Europe a virtual environment for storing, share and re-using their data, regardless national borders and divisions between different domains.
GARR National Research Network, with its high capacity will have a key role in supporting the initiative. Minister of Education, University and Research, Valeria Fedeli commented: "Italy considers the implementation of the new European supercomputing infrastructure to be a key enabler: These infrastructures will be strategic not only for Italian research organizations such as CINECA, GARR, INFN and CNR, but also for enhancing industrial competitivity.
Among the many sectors which are going to benefit from the enhanced computing offering to process Big Data, it is worth mentioning personalised medicine and Industry 4.0. In addition, the opportunity to easily access computing resources and manage large remote databases through high-speed links could enhance SME competitivity, with a positive impact on the growth of the digital market and on occupation.”
The ministers of seven countries (France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain) and Italy, on behalf of which Minister of Economic Development Carlo Calenda and Minister of Education, University and Research Valeria Fedeli both signed) highlighted the importance of supercomputers and of their capacity to process large amounts of data in real time, thus allowing to simulate the effect of new drugs, improve diagnosis and make it swifter, offer better healthcare, ensure epidemics control, and enhance decisionmaking in number of fields, from energy and water management, to the smart cities.
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