Supercomputers and large Datacenters constitute basic infrastructure of strategic importance in modern society. Among the many sectors that they support, it suffices to mention the search for drugs against covid-19, and the fact that applications like gov.gr and global-scale teleconferencing, teleworking, and on-line education all run on large Datacenters. Recognizing the strategic importance of these High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies, the European Union has been funding related research, and has recently created the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) with a 1 billion Euro budget.
Greece actively participates in such research since many years ago, through a number of important European research & innovation projects - some of which under Greek Coordination. The EuroHPC JU has recently concluded the evaluation of the proposals that were submitted to its 2019 Call. As a result of this evaluation, 19 projects will be funded in the period 2021-2024, with a total budget of over 113 million Euro in all of Europe. Partners from Greece participate in eight (8) of these 19 projects, and the budget of the Greek partners in these 8 projects amounts to 8.9 million Euro. Thus, in terms of budget, the contribution of Greece to this HPC research ranks fifth (5th) among all European countries, coming right after France, Germany, Spain, and Italy: Greece is being recognized as one of the top European countries in research and development in the technologies of Supercomputers and large Datacenters.
