All posts by : Kateřina Beranová

FF4EUROHPC CALL 2

This call for proposals targets highest quality experiments involving innovative, agile SMEs and putting forward work plans built around innovation targets arising from the use of advanced HPC services. Proposals are sought that address business challenges from European SMEs from varied application domains, with strong preference being given to engineering and manufacturing, or sectors able to demonstrate fast economic growth or particular economic impact for Europe. The highest priority is given to proposals directly addressing the business challenges of manufacturing SMEs.

Priority will be given to consortia centred on SMEs that are new to the use of advanced HPC services; in particular, prior involvement in the Fortissimo or Fortissimo 2 projects would require the innovation aspects for the proposed experiment to be clearly justified, the same applies for activities already funded through other programs.

KEY CALL DETAILS

Submission Deadline: 29^th September 2021 at 17:00 Brussels local time

Expected duration of experiments: maximum 15 months with expected commencement 1^st March 2022

Funding for Call-2: the indicative total funding budget is € 5 M

Maximum funding request per proposal: € 200,000 (covering all participants)

Funding constraints for experiment participants (which will be Third Parties as foreseen by Horizon 2020 funding rules): The maximum funding that can be allocated to any Third Party, across all experiments in which that Third Party is involved (including any experiments selected under Call-1), is € 150,000. Proposals to FF4EuroHPC Call-2 that do not adhere to the abovementioned funding restrictions will be rejected without further evaluation.

While the participation of certain FF4EuroHPC beneficiaries in experiments is eligible, the cost of their activities in experiments must not be included in the requested funding for experiments.

EXPECTATIONS FOR NEW EXPERIMENTS

The expectations for the proposed experiments are that they should:

• Involve all necessary parties required for the effective and efficient execution of the experiment and the demonstration of the impact on SME business challenges through the use of HPC systems or advanced HPC services. Appropriate technical management is a required component.
• Define the HPC computing resources they need and budget for them, possibly using computing resources provided directly by the EuroHPC JU, PRACE or through national actions. The HPC National Competence Centres may be able to provide assistance with the selection of appropriate resources and the application process. (FF4EuroHPC will not be in a position to provide computing resources).
• Declare any data protection issues that might impact its proposed work plan, define data/information protection mechanisms addressing these in the framework of European law, and ensure that the operation of the experiment adheres to these.
• Generate publishable success stories – preferably in multi-media form – based on solutions for the SME’s real-world problems that clearly identify the resulting business benefits.
• Align, where appropriate, with regional priorities, such as industrial specialisation areas.
• Be complementary to those already included in the past Fortissimo and Fortissimo 2 projects and to those selected in FF4EuroHPC Call 1.

The complete announcement and proposer’s guide for the current open call can be downloaded as a pdf document here.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION

Access to the proposal submission tool and detailed instructions for proposal submission, together with information about the evaluation criteria to be applied, FAQs and an evaluation check-list, are provided on the following webpage.

See the webinar videos and presentations via the link below and get all information you need for your participation in the second Open Call!

www.ff4eurohpc.eu/en/open-calls/open-call/

In order to enable the European Union to rank among the world’s leaders in supercomputing technologies, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking was established in 2018, marking the onset of a new era of a single pan-European strategy for the development and deployment of HPC technologies in research, industry, and society. By facilitating closer coordination at the level of infrastructure and resource allocation, technology development, and the development of advanced software, EuroHPC set out to build a sustainable and globally competitive European HPC ecosystem. However, it has become clear that the level of HPC technology utilization varies considerably across the EU member states. Generally all over Europe, a consistently high level of knowledge and expertise in the field of HPC as well as in other related fields such as data analysis and processing and artificial intelligence is missing.   In order to eliminate these major shortcomings and barriers to more massive deployment of HPC technologies in real life, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking has approved funding of a project to establish a pan-European network of HPC Competence Centers. The project is titled EuroCC, and the function of the National HPC Competence Center for the Czech Republic is held by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava.

With a total budget amounting to EUR 57 million, the international EuroCC project brings together 33 European countries. Approximately half of the funding to support the creation of each competence center is being provided by Horizon 2020, the European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, while the other half will come from each individual country. The first phase of the project will last for two years and started officially with the launch of the EuroCC project on 1^st September 2020. Within the project, IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center will first undertake an audit of HPC competencies and potential industrial outreach, identifying available expertise and knowledge gaps in the Czech Republic in order to subsequently fill these gaps. “The EuroCC project aims at establishing a pan-European network of National HPC Competence Centers to increase HPC knowledge. These centers will support academia, public administration, and industry, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, and promote the use of available knowledge, expertise, and HPC resources in Europe to them,” explains Tomáš Karásek, the project coordinator for the Czech Republic from IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB-TUO.

Simultaneously with the launching of the EuroCC project, the CASTIEL project has been launched, bringing together several selected supercomputing centers to provide coordination support. While EuroCC coordinates HPC expertise within each member state, CASTIEL will lead activities to promote interaction and the exchange of expertise across the entire EuroCC network. CASTIEL aims at developing a pan-European competency map that will catalog both available resources and knowledge gaps across all EuroCC competence centers and provide expert support, courses, training, and workshops in order to minimize the differences among the member states as well as to increase overall level of HPC technology adoption across Europe.  It will also provide knowledge and expertise essential to meet HPC needs in industrial research and development, which would include mentoring by the centers and international meetings bringing together HPC technology users to present their successful case studies and best practices. These meetings will enable not only better understanding and addressing of specific needs of industrial HPC users but also significant support for small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of evaluating the benefits of investing into HPC technologies and resources.