Press Supercomputers will accelerate digital and green transitions

"This private-public partnership on European High Performance Computing will place the EU at the forefront of supercomputing by harnessing the increased capabilities for processing and analysing data for our European citizens, businesses, researchers and public administrations", said Maria da Graça Carvalho MEP, the European Parliament’s Negotiator on the law setting up the supercomputer initiative.

The European Parliament will debate today and vote tomorrow on a law setting up a private-public partnership which aims to boost the European Union's capabilities to accelerate the digital transformation by High Performance Computing. The private-public partnership is valued at €8 billion.

"We want to ensure that the High Performance Computing Network serves our citizens, businesses - including Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) - research institutions and administrations. My goal as Parliament's Negotiator was precisely to ensure that our supercomputers will indeed become the engines of transformation they were destined to be", added da Graça Carvalho.

Supercomputers are fundamental for Europe to reach climate targets and are at the core of this digital decade. They will play a crucial role in industrial transformation. This public-private partnership stems from the EU’s research programme, Horizon Europe. It aims to better equip the EU on data processing and to reinforce the research and innovation aspect of supercomputing technologies.

"We need a demand-oriented, user-driven system. This is the reason why we called for the creation of a User Forum with advisory roles, including representatives of the industry and SMEs", da Graça Carvalho explained.

Carvalho added that creating the ecosystem behind this supercomputer network will also be of critical importance. "Through research and innovation, we must address the European shortcomings in hardware manufacturing, with an emphasis on microprocessors. Further research on quantum computing must also be properly ensured", she explained.

The result of the vote is expected to be announced on Thursday afternoon.