L-R: Sylvie Lucas, Secretary General of Foreign Ministry; Franz Fayot, Economy Minister; Jean Asselborn, Foreign Minister; Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for Internal Market; Anders Dam Jense, Executive Director of EuroHPC;
Credit: MAEE
Monday marked the official inauguration of the headquarters of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) in Luxembourg.
Luxembourg's Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Jean Asselborn, and the Minister of the Economy, Franz Fayot, as well as the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, Chair of the EuroHPC JU Governing Board, Dr Herbert Zeisel, and Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, Anders Dam Jensen, were in attendance to open the new premises on 3 May 2021.
On this occasion, Luxembourg's Foreign Minister said: “I am particularly proud that the choice fell, quite naturally, on Luxembourg, heart of the European Union’s digital hub, to host the seat of the EuroHPC JU. In its double capacity as member and host state of the EuroHPC JU, Luxembourg will continue to support this promising initiative, which ensures the competitiveness of the EU in the development of the digital economy in Europe and to position Europe as a world leader in the field of high performance computing”.
Luxembourg's Economy added: “The EuroHPC initiative is a perfect example of how joint investments by the EU and the Member States can move Europe forward in different areas of advanced technology. I am proud that it was under Luxembourg’s leadership that the EU put HPC on its strategic agenda a few years ago as a key building block for the Digital Single Market and European Cloud initiatives”.
In addition to hosting the EuroHPC headquarters, Luxembourg is getting a supercomputer called “Meluxina”, which is co-financed by European funds and which will be part of the European network of seven supercomputers already procured. Hosted in LuxConnect’s DC2 data centre in Bissen, MeluXina will be operational shortly and will be the second European supercomputer to be activated after "Vega" in Slovenia
The EuroHPC JU headquarters are located in the Technopolis Gasperich building in Cloche d’Or. The EuroHPC JU staff is made up today of a team of fifteen colleagues. The team is expected to grow significantly with the new regulation coming into force at the end of 2021.
Created within the framework of the “high performance computing” (HPC) European strategic interest project, the EuroHPC JU manages and supervises from Luxembourg the pooling of resources to develop and set up a European supercomputer network. This network will ultimately provide the computing capacities necessary for companies, research centres and universities to ensure the competitiveness of the European Union (EU) in the context of the development of the digital economy in Europe.
