Current projects

EuroCC aims to build a European network of 33 national HPC competence centres to bridge the existing HPC skills gaps while promoting cooperation across Europe. To do so, each of the participating countries are tasked with establishing a single National Competence Centre (NCC) in the area of HPC in their respective countries. These NCCs will coordinate activities in all HPC-related fields at the national level and serve as a contact point for customers from industry, science, (future) HPC experts, and the general public alike. Each of the 33 national competence centres will act locally to map available HPC competencies and identify existing knowledge gaps. The competence centres will coordinate HPC expertise at national level and ease access to European HPC opportunities for research and scientific users, public administration but also in different industrial sectors, delivering tailored solutions for a wide variety of users.

• Duration: 2020 - 2022, 2023 - 2025
• Website: https://www.eurocc-project.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/951732
• Coordinated by: University of Stuttgart, Germany
• Austrian collaborators: Universität Wien, TU Wien, BOKU Wien, TU Graz, Universität Innsbruck, Vienna Scientific Cluster, INITS
• Contact in Austria: markus.stoehr@tuwien.ac.at
• National cofunding: BMBWF

HPCQS – High Performance Computer and Quantum Simulator hybrid

The project HPCQS aims to integrate two quantum simulators, each controlling about 100+  quantum bits (qubits) in two already existing supercomputers: 

• the supercomputer Joliot Curie of GENCI, the French national HPC organisation, located in France;

• the JUWELS supercomputer of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), located in Germany.

In doing so, HPCQS will become an incubator for quantum-HPC hybrid computing that is unique in the world. 

The seamless integration of quantum hardware with classical computing resources will enable research entities and industries to exploit new quantum technologies and find solutions to complex challenges in physics, chemistry and numerical optimisation with practical applications, for example, to materials and drug design, logistics and transportation. 

HPCQS will develop the programming platform for the quantum simulator and offer cloud-based access to users and researchers. The project will build  an open and evolutionary infrastructure that aims at expanding in the future by including a diversity of quantum computing platforms at different technology readiness levels in an HPC system and by allowing the integration of other European partners. The HPCQS infrastructure is a first step towards a European quantum computing infrastructure in synergy with the ongoing European efforts to establish a world-leading HPC infrastructure.

• Duration: Dez. 2021 - Nov. 2025
• Website: https://www.hpcqs.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101018180
• Coordinated by: Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Germany
• Austrian collaborators: University of Innsbruck, Parity Quantum Computing GmbH

Vienna Scientific Cluster is supporting TAILSIT to port and optimise their engineering simulation software tools to take advantage of modern High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems.

More information: https://vsc.ac.at/news/2021/news-records/shape-project-with-tailsit/

The DAPHNE project aims to define and build an open and extensible system infrastructure for integrated data analysis pipelines, including data management and processing, high-performance computing (HPC), and machine learning (ML) training and scoring. Key observations are that (1) systems of these areas share many compilation and runtime techniques, (2) there is a trend towards complex data analysis pipelines that combine these systems, and (3) the used, increasingly heterogeneous, hardware infrastructure converges as well. Yet, the programming paradigms, cluster resource management, as well as data formats and representations differ substantially. Therefore, this project aims – with a joint consortium of experts from the data management, ML systems, and HPC communities – at systematically investigating the necessary system infrastructure, language abstractions, compilation and runtime techniques, as well as systems and tools necessary to increase the productivity when building such data analysis pipelines, and eliminating unnecessary performance bottlenecks.

• Duration: Dec. 2020 – Nov. 2024
• Website: http://daphne-eu.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/957407
• Coordinated by: Know-Center GmbH
• Austrian collaborators: Know-Center GmbH, AVL List GmbH, Infineion Technologies Austria AG, Kompetenzzentrum Automobil- und Industrieelektronik GmbH,
• Contact in Austria: epaulusberger@know-center.at, m.boehm@tugraz.at
• Funding: Horizon 2020

The CloudiFacturing innovative solution integrates software and hardware platforms to assist manufacturing SMEs and their demand for advanced cloud- or HPC-based ICT solutions. The EU-funded DIGITbrain project will extend CloudiFacturing with an augmented digital-twin concept called digital product brain (DPB) and a smart business model called manufacturing as a service (MaaS). The DPB will allow the customisation and adaptation of on-demand data, models, algorithms and resources for industrial products according to individual conditions. MaaS will permit manufacturing SMEs to reach advanced manufacturing facilities within their territories and beyond. The project aims to support the development of advanced digital and manufacturing technologies through more than 20 highly innovative cross-border experiments, in addition to training and assisting digital innovation hubs in the implementation of the Maas model, contributing to their long-term sustainability.

• Duration: Jul. 2020 – Dec. 2023
• Website: https://digitbrain.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/952071 
• Coordinated by: Ciaotech Srl, Italy
• Austrian collaborators: nxtControl GmbH
• Funding: H2020-EU.2.1.1.

Most of Europe’s SMEs lag behind in data-driven innovation. To tackle this problem, the EU-funded EUHubs4Data project will build a European federation of Data Innovation Hubs based on existing key players in this area and connecting with data incubators and platforms, SME networks, AI communities, skills and training organisations and open data repositories. A European catalogue of data sources and federated data-driven services and solutions will be made accessible to European SMEs, start-ups and web entrepreneurs through the Data Innovation Hubs. Cross-border and cross-sector data-driven experimentation will be facilitated through data-sharing, as well as data- and service interoperability, becoming a reference instrument for growth in a global data economy and contributing to the creation of common European data spaces.

• Duration: Sept. 2020 – Dec. 2023
• Website: https://euhubs4data.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/951771
• Coordinated by: Instituto Tecnológico de Informática, Spain
• Austrian collaborators: Know-Center GmbH
• Funding: H2020-EU.2.1.1.

Neuroscientists are set to benefit from a new consortium formed by five of the most significant supercomputing centres in Europe (Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy and France). Together, they formed the High Performance Analytics and Computing (HPAC) Platform of the Human Brain Project (HBP). The EU-funded ICEI project will set up cloud-like services compatible with the work cultures of scientific computing and data science. This will offer scientists a new quality of supercomputing that is both highly interactive and capable of extreme calculations. This elastic and scalable system will be adapted for neuroscientific research.  ICEI is the first implementation project of the Fenix infrastructure (https://fenix-ri.eu).

• Duration: Jan. 2018 – Sep. 2023
• Website: https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/massive-computing/fenix-icei/
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/800858
• Coordinated by: EBRAINS, Belgium
• Austrian collaborators: Institute of Science and Technology, Medizinische Universität Innsbruck, Österr. Studiengesellschaft für Kybernetik Verein, Technische Universität Graz, Convelop – Cooperative Knowledge Design GmbH
• Funding: H2020-EU.1.4.

Public administrations in all countries and science, technology and innovation  (STI) stakeholders produce a vast amount of dynamic, multilingual and heterogeneous data. Understanding and analysing these data are instrumental to evidence-based policymaking. The EU-funded IntelComp project will establish an innovative cloud platform to assist public administrators and policymakers in the STI domain with AI-based services. The project will engage multidisciplinary groups to co-develop innovative analytics services, natural language processing pipelines and AI workflows and to exploit open data, services and computational resources from the European Open Science Cloud and high-performance computing environments as well as federated distributed operations. IntelComp will adopt living lab methodologies and involve public and private stakeholders to explore and assess STI policies.

• Duration: Jan. 2021 – Dec. 2023
• Website: https://intelcomp.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101004870
• Coordinated by: Fundacion Espanola para la cienciay la tecnologia, F.S.P., FECYT, Spain
• Austrian collaborators: Zentrum für Soziale Innovation GmbH
• Funding: H2020-EU.3.6.2.2.

Over the past 60+ years CMOS-based digital computing has giving rise to ever-greater computational performance, „big data“-based business models and the accelerating digital transformation of modern economies. However, the ever-growing amounts of data to be handled and the increasing complexity of today’s tasks for high performance computing (HPC) are becoming unmanageable as the data handling and energy consumption of HPCs, server farms and cloud services grow to unsustainable levels. New concepts and technologies are needed. One such HPC technology is Quantum computing (QC). QC utilizes so-called quantum bits (qubits) to perform complex calculations fundamentally much faster than a conventional digital-bit computers can. First quantum computer prototypes have been created. Superconducting Josephson junctions (SJJs) have been shown to be extremely promising qubit candidates to achieve a significant nonlinear increase of computational power with the number of qubits. For novel materials there is a great challenge yet opportunity in Europe to create a complete value chain for SSJs and QCs. Such a complete value chain will contribute to Europe’s technology sovereignty. The MATQu project aims at validating the technology options to produce SJJs on industrial 300 mm silicon-based process flows. It covers substrate technology, superconducting metals, resonators, through-wafer-via holes, 3D integration, and variability characterization. These will be assessed with respect to integration practices of qubits. Core substrate and process technologies with high quality factors, improved material deposition on large-substrates, and increased critical temperature for superconducting operation, will be developed and validated. The MATQu partners complement each other in an optimal way across the value chain to create a substantial competitive advantage, e.g. faster time-to-market and roll-out of technologies and materials for better Josephson junctions for quantum computing.

• Duration: Jun. 2021 – May 2024
• Website: https://matqu.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007322
• Coordinated by: Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung E.V., Germany
• Austrian collaborators: Besi, Austria
• Funding: H2020-EU.2.1.1.7.

The social sciences and humanities (SSH) – from sociology and economics to psychology, political science and cultural science – play an important role in improving our assessment of and response to complex societal issues. It is important to find new ways to conduct, connect and discover research and to support scientific, industrial and societal applications of SSH science. Thanks to a consortium of 18 partners, the EU-funded TRIPLE project will develop a multilingual and multicultural solution for the appropriation of SSH resources. It will make it easier for researchers to discover and reuse SSH research and to embark on interdisciplinary collaboration initiatives. It will make use of the online platform ISIDORE (created by France’s CNRS).

• Duration: Oct. 2019 – Mar. 2023
• Website: https://www.gotriple.eu
• Cordis link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/863420
• Coordinated by: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS, France
• Austrian collaborators: Know-Center GmbH, Open Knowledge Maps – Verein zur Forderung der Sichtbarkeit wissenschaftlichen Wissens
• Funding: H2020-EU.1.4.