Europe’s First Supercomputer Is Up and Running
In the Slovenian city of Maribor, a supercomputer, created by a joint venture of the European Union with money from EU funds and EU member states, has been launched.
At the launch ceremony, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Vestager stressed that the Vega supercomputer is the first of several.
She said European supercomputers will help save lives by supporting artificial intelligence to identify molecules for advanced drug treatments, tracking COVID-19 infections and other diseases.
The Vega supercomputer was created by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Venture (EuroHPC) with funding from Union funds and EU member states. The joint investment in it amounted to 17200000 euros.
The supercomputer has a computational performance of 6.9 petaflops. It will support applications in many fields, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and high-performance data analysis.
According to an EC press release, it will help European researchers and industry achieve new advances in bioengineering, meteorology, climate change, personalized medicine, and the invention of new materials and drugs.
Besides Vega, EuroHPC supercomputers have been purchased and installed in scientific institutions from different EU countries Sofia Tech Park in Bulgaria, National Supercomputer Center IT4Innovations in the Czech Republic, CINECA in Italy, LuxProvide in Luxembourg, Minho Advanced Computing Center in Portugal, and CSC Scientific Center in Finland.
The new EuroHPC enterprise regulation provides an additional €8 billion investment in next-generation supercomputers, including quantum supercomputers.
