Article 3 Mission, objectives and activities

to provide the research and scientific community, as well as the industry including SMEs, and the public sector from the Union or countries associated to Horizon 2020 with the best available and competitive High Performance Computing and data infrastructure and to support the development of its technologies and its applications across a wide range of fields;

to provide a framework for the acquisition of an integrated, demand-oriented and user-driven world-class petascale and pre-exascale supercomputing and data infrastructure in the Union;

to provide Union-level coordination and adequate financial resources to support the development and acquisition of such infrastructure, which will be accessible to users from the public and private sector primarily for research and innovation purposes;

to support an ambitious research and innovation agenda to develop and maintain in the Union a world-class High Performance Computing ecosystem, exascale and beyond, covering all scientific and industrial value chain segments, including low-power processor and middleware technologies, algorithms and code design, applications and systems, services and engineering, interconnections, know-how and skills, for the next generation supercomputing era;

to promote the uptake and systematic use of research and innovation results generated in the Union by users from science, industry, including SMEs, and the public sector.

to contribute to the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 1291/2013 and Decision 2013/743/EU, in particular Part II of the specific programme as defined in Article 2 of that Decision (‘specific programme’), and to the implementation of Regulations (EU) No 1316/2013 and (EU) No 283/2014;

to align strategies between Member States and the Union in a coordinated European High Performance Computing strategy and contribute to the effectiveness of public support by avoiding unnecessary duplication and fragmentation of efforts;

to pool Union resources, national resources and private investment and bring the investments in High Performance Computing to a level comparable to that of its global competitors;

to build and operate a world-class integrated supercomputing and data infrastructure with the necessary variety in architecture for addressing different user requirements across the Union as an essential component for scientific excellence, and for the digitisation of industry, and the public sector, and for strengthening the innovation capabilities and global competitiveness for creating economic and employment growth in the Union;

to provide access to High Performance Computing-based infrastructures and services to a wide range of users from the research and scientific community, as well as the industry including SMEs, and the public sector, for new and emerging data and compute-intensive applications and services;

to support the development in the Union of world-class exascale and post-exascale High Performance Computing technologies, including low-power micro-processor and related middleware technologies, and their integration into supercomputing systems through a co-design approach, as well as their uptake in large-scale and emerging application fields;

to bridge the gap between research and development and the delivery of exascale High Performance Computing systems reinforcing the digital technology supply chain in the Union and enabling the acquisition by the Joint Undertaking of world-class supercomputers, possibly integrating European technologies;

to achieve excellence in High Performance Computing applications for world-class performance through development and optimisation of codes and applications and other High Performance Computing-enabled large-scale and emerging lead-market applications in a co-design approach, supporting Centres of Excellence in High Performance Computing applications and large-scale High Performance Computing-enabled pilot demonstrators and test-beds for big data applications and services in a wide range of scientific and industrial areas;

to interconnect and federate regional, national and European High Performance Computing supercomputers and other computing systems, data centres and associated software and applications in cooperation with PRACE and GÉANT;

to increase the innovation potential of industry, and in particular of SMEs, using advanced High Performance Computing infrastructures, applications and services, through the creation and in particular through the networking and coordination of national High Performance Computing competence centres across the Union;

to improve understanding of High Performance Computing and contribute to reducing skills gaps in the Union related to High Performance Computing through awareness, training and dissemination of know-how;

to widen the scope of High Performance Computing usage.

general administrative activities for the operation and management of the Joint Undertaking;

activities for the acquisition, deployment, interconnection, operation and access time management of world-class supercomputing and data infrastructures;

activities for supporting a research and innovation agenda for establishing an innovation ecosystem addressing hardware and software supercomputing technologies and their integration into exascale supercomputing systems, advanced applications, services and tools, skills and know-how.