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Ref. Ares(2019)5332022 - 21/08/2019
Commissioner Carlos Moedas 
Davos- World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2018 
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland  
24 - 26 January 2018 
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1. STEERING BRIEF 
1.1 Scene setter 
 
You have received an invitation on behalf of 

of Hewlett 
Packard Enterprise, to meet during Davos.  
 
Some possible points for discussion include: 
 
•  High Performance Computing-  proposed by HPE  considering that HPE is a 
global leader in HPC. 
 
 
1.2 Line to take 
 

•  Highlight the progress of the EU in terms of High Performance Computing 
 
 
1.3 Objective 
 

•  Mention the most recent developments in terms of HPC, notably the European 
High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking –  EuroHPC-  which was 
announced by the European Commission on 11 January 2018 
 

 
1.4 Speaking points 
 

•  The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking –  EuroHPC- 
was announced on 11 January 2018.The activities of the Joint Undertaking will 
consist of: 
 
o  Acquisition and operation of two world-class pre-exascale 
supercomputing machines and at least two mid-range supercomputing 
machines (capable of around 1016 calculations per second), and 
providing and managing access to these supercomputers to a wide range 
of public and private users starting from 2020. 
 
o  Research and innovation programme on HPC: to support the 
development of European supercomputing technology including the first 
generation of European low-power microprocessor technology, and the 
co-design of European exascale machines, and to foster applications, 
skills development and a wider use of High-Performance Computing. 
 
•  The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking will operate in 2019-2026 
 
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2. BACKGROUND 
 
2.1 High Performance Computing 
 

•  High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of super computers and parallel 
processing techniques for solving complex computational problems. 
 
•  In the digital era, it is a strategic resource for Europe's future. 
 
•  Considering the necessity to deal with these large amounts of data: 
 
i) 
Industry and SMEs are increasingly relying on the power of 
supercomputers to work on innovative solutions, reduce cost and 
decrease time to market for products and services; 
 
ii) 
Modern  scientific discovery requires very high computing power and 
capability: for example, to accelerate genome sequencing by two orders 
of magnitude and enable scientists to crack cancer diseases. 
 
•  The realisation of the European High-performance computing (shortly, 
EuroHPC) strategy will be based on key pillars addressing: 
 
i) 
an ambitious High-performance computing (HPC) research and 
innovation agenda for the development of hardware and software 
components, systems and applications: developing the next generation of 
key HPC technologies and systems towards exascale and post exascale; 
 
ii) 
infrastructure development and acquisition of world class 
supercomputing and data infrastructures and their interconnection 
(procurement in 2020-2021 of two pre-exascale HPC machines, in 2022-
2023 of two full exascale HPC machines and by 2026-2028 of two post-
exascale machines); 
 
iii) 
support to applications and skills development; 
 
iv) 
federation of national and European High-performance computing (HPC) 
resources through an HPC and Big Data service infrastructure facility; 
 
v) 
support to High-performance computing (HPC) Centres of Excellence 
(CoEs) for developing, preparing and optimising HPC codes and 
applications for future exascale and post-exascale systems in co-design 
 
•  The EU investment until the end 2020 is close to EUR 1 billion for world-class 
European supercomputers while another EUR 4 billion are foreseen under the 
next MFF. EU level financing will support collaboration in R&D and will ensure 
cross border access to foremost High-performance computing (HPC) and data 
infrastructure. 
 
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