Will Switzerland be denied access to EuroHPC?
Luxembourg is the seat of EuroHPC JU.7 Feb 2019 Brussels - According to Science | Business, the European Commission is denying or at least delaying access of Switzerland to the EuroHPC JU. Switzerland is housing the fastest supercomputer in Europe for several years and they are very active in a diversity of European and international supercomputer consortia. Switzerland was also involved in the EuroHPC plans from almost the beginning. It signed the EuroHPC declaration in October 2017. According to CSC, Finland, Switzerland showed interest in a possible pre-exascale consortium led by Finland. Because the deadline for pre-exascale hosting entities is closing in April, time may be running out.
Science | Business is citing an anynomous Swiss official:
"A Swiss official said that as a consequence of the Selmayr memo, the commission's legal service is now delaying Swiss membership of EuroHPC, a new Horizon 2020-funded joint undertaking in high performance computing. That is despite the fact, 'We were giving a lot of resources and support in setting up this new joint undertaking', according to the official. Switzerland is currently home to the most powerful supercomputer in Europe."
We did not get that confirmed yet, but in general Science | Business is well-informed.
For the timeline of EuroHPC (including the signing of Switzerland of the EuroHPC declaration) see:
Our coverage of the pre-exascale hosting entity call:
- So you want to host a 250 million euro European pre-exascale supercomputer with EuroHPC funding?
- Per Öster sees free cooling as asset in CSC's hosting entity bid preparing for pre-exascale
- A number of European countries joining forces to bid for hosting Europe's fastest supercomputer
The Science | Business article: