L-R: Alexandru Petrescu, Romania Minister of Communications; Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Economy and Digital Society; Francisco de Paula Polo Llavata. Secretary of State for Information Society; PM Xavier Bettel; Credit: European Union

Luxembourg has been selected as both the seat of the European Joint Undertaking for High Performance Computing (EuroHPC) and as a priority site among the eight countries to host the first European supercomputers.

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is a joint initiative of the EU and European countries to develop a world-class, high-performance computing ecosystem in Europe, headquartered in Luxembourg. As part of the establishment of a European network of High Performance Computing (HPC), EuroHPC had recently launched a call for projects to European countries to obtain hosting proposals petascale supercomputers.

Luxembourg submitted its own HPC project, developed in collaboration between the Ministry of the Economy and LuxConnect, for the selection of accommodation for petascale supercomputers as part of HPC's European network. In the end, Luxembourg's proposal was selected for European co-financing for the realisation of its own HPC, which will be integrated into the European network of supercomputers. The Luxembourg supercomputer will focus primarily on the needs of companies and players in the Luxembourg economy, with particular emphasis on use by SMEs and start-ups as well as applications in the context of personalised medicine and eHealth projects.

As part of the transposition of the Rifkin strategy of the third industrial revolution, the implementation in Luxembourg of a HPC supercomputer was one of the priority measures chosen. The HPC that will be installed and commissioned in 2020 with LuxConnect in Bissen will have a power of 10 petaflops / second, which corresponds to 10,000,000,000,000,000 calculation operations per second.

Following this announcement, Vice-President of the European Commission, Günther Oettinger, congratulated Prime Minister Xavier Bettel during their meeting on Friday. On this occasion, Xavier Bettel noted that "the European Joint Undertaking for High Performance Computing (EuroHPC) is an excellent example of how the European Union works for the good of our economy and our science sector". He added: "I am very happy that after the decision to locate the EuroHPC entity in Luxembourg, we were also the nerve center of the HPC with a European supercomputer".

Another subject that was discussed during this meeting was Luxembourg's digital policy, particularly regarding public administration. Here, the Prime Minister emphasised that digitisation opens a new era of public services for citizens and businesses. 

Xavier Bettel again discussed digitalisation at the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council held today in Luxembourg. Participants adopted conclusions on the future of a highly digitalised Europe after 2020 to boost digital and economic competitiveness across the EU and digital cohesion. The Luxembourg Prime Minister emphasised the need for "an ambitious, courageous and effective European programme whose fundamental principle is to deepen the single market". In the margins of the Council, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and European Commissioner for the Economy and Digital Society, Mariya Gabriel, also had a brief exchange on the policy of high performance computing, as well as on the EuroHPC project.

The decision of the European Commission to locate one of the first supercomputers in Luxembourg was welcomed by Xavier Bettel, who concluded: "Luxembourg is ready to play a pioneering, constructive and participatory role in the implementation of the European Digital Policy. "