European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking

The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a public-private partnership in high-performance computing (HPC), enabling the pooling of European Union–level resources with the resources of participating EU member states and participating associated states of the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes, as well as private stakeholders.

The Joint Undertaking has the twin stated aims of developing a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure, and supporting research and innovation activities.

[2][3] In June 2018, the Council of the EU endorsed the European Commission’s proposal to establish the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.

[7] The Joint Undertaking provides financial support in the form of procurement or research and innovation grants to participants following open and competitive calls.

The hosting sites will be located in Sofia (Bulgaria), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Kajaani (Finland), Bologna (Italy), Bissen (Luxembourg), Minho (Portugal), Maribor (Slovenia), and Barcelona (Spain).

The HPC system supplied by Hewlett Packard Enterprise is designed to respond coherently to the needs of its user communities, addressing complex scientific and industrial challenges, including standard numerical simulations, demanding data analysis, and artificial intelligence applications.

The cost is co-financed by Bulgaria and EuroHPC JU with a joint investment of € 11.5 million completed by Atos.

The Vega supercomputer was jointly financed by EuroHPC JU and the Institute of Information Science Maribor (IZUM) to the sum of €17.2 million euros.

As of October 2024, public members of the Joint Undertaking include, the European Union (represented by the European Commission), 27 of the 27 EU member states (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden), and eight non-EU associated states of the EU's Horizon 2020 programme (Iceland, Israel, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

[38] The United Kingdom lost its observer status following its departure from the EU on 31 January 2020,[39] but subsequently rejoined EuroHPC in May 2024.

[38] There are three bodies in the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking: The governing board is composed of representatives of the EU and participating states.

[41] The rest of the voting rights are distributed among the participating states according to the following lines; The industrial and scientific advisory board consists of two Groups which provide independent advice to the Governing Board; The executive director is the chief executive responsible for day-to-day management of the Joint Undertaking.