Council Regulation (EU) 2021/1173 of 13 July 2021 on establishing the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking and repealing Regulation (EU) 2018/1488

Article 1

Establishment

Article 2

Definitions

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:

(1) ‘acceptance test’ means a test conducted to determine if the requirements of the system specification are met by a EuroHPC supercomputer;

(2) ‘access time’ means the computing time of a supercomputer that is made available to a user or a group of users to execute their computer programmes;

(3) ‘affiliated entity’ means any legal entity as defined in Article 187(1) of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046;

(3a) ‘AI-optimised supercomputer’ means a supercomputer that is designed primarily for training large scale, general-purpose artificial intelligence (‘AI’) models and emerging AI applications;

(3b) ‘AI factory’ means a centralised or distributed entity that provides an AI supercomputing service infrastructure which is composed of an AI-optimised supercomputer or an AI partition of a supercomputer, an associated data centre, dedicated access and AI-oriented supercomputing services, and which attracts and pools talent to provide the competences required to use the supercomputers for AI;

(3c) ‘Artificial Intelligence gigafactory’ or ‘AI gigafactory’ means a state-of-the-art large-scale facility with sufficient capacity to handle the complete lifecycle, from development to large-scale inference, of very large AI models and applications, providing a supercomputing service infrastructure which is composed of AI-optimised computing capacity, a supporting data centre infrastructure including high-capacity storage and networking, dedicated secure cloud user access environments, and specialised secure AI-oriented support services for its advanced operations, all of which are supported by an environmentally sustainable infrastructure, in particular for energy and water supply systems;

(3d) ‘Artificial Intelligence gigafactory Consortium’ or ‘AI gigafactory Consortium’ means an association of eligible legal entities forming a consortium and bound by a consortium agreement with the purpose of establishing and operating an AI gigafactory and specifying the respective roles and responsibilities of those entities for the lifetime of the AI gigafactory, or a new legal entity established for the purpose of establishing and operating an AI gigafactory, and such consortium is duly established in the Union for a minimum duration of five years and of which one or more of the private partners may be participating in the Private Members of the Joint Undertaking;

(3e) ‘AI gigafactory Coordinator’ means a legal entity, duly incorporated in the Union and validly existing under the laws of the Member State in which it is established, which: is legally authorised to represent an AI gigafactory Consortium and has the legal capacity and authority to enter into, execute and perform the AI gigafactory Hosting Agreement; is headquartered in the Union; is under the control, directly or indirectly, through ownership interest or via other means, as defined in Chapter IV of Regulation (EU) No 2024/1624 of the European Parliament and of the Council (¹) and relevant Union competition law principles, of legal entities or natural persons established within the Union; and may also be an existing hosting entity representing a Participating State that is a Member State or a hosting consortium of Participating States;

(3f) ‘AI gigafactory Hosting Agreement’ means an agreement between the Joint Undertaking and the AI gigafactory Coordinator to host and operate an AI gigafactory;

(3g) ‘AI gigafactory hosting entity’ means a legal entity which has been designated by an AI gigafactory Consortium to host and operate an AI gigafactory and its services, and which is established in a Participating State that is a Member State;

(3h) ‘Artificial Intelligence gigafactory Cooperation Agreement’ is an agreement between the Joint Undertaking and a third country specifying eligibility of participation in an AI gigafactory Consortium and user access to AI gigafactories for the legal entities under the control, directly or indirectly, through ownership interest or via other means, of legal entities or natural persons established in that third country;

(3i) ‘a multi-site single-country AI gigafactory’ is an AI gigafactory deployed in more than one physical location within the territory of one Member State;

(3j) ‘a multi-site multi-country AI gigafactory’ is an AI gigafactory deployed in more than one physical location and in the territories of more than one Member State;

(4) ‘Centre of Excellence in High Performance Computing’ means a collaborative project selected in an open and competitive call for proposals to promote the use of upcoming extreme performance computing capabilities enabling user communities in collaboration with other High Performance Computing stakeholders to scale up existing parallel codes towards exascale and extreme scaling performance;

(5) ‘co-design’ means a collective approach between technology suppliers and users engaged in a collaborative and iterative design process for developing new technologies, applications and systems;

(6) ‘conflict of interest’ means a situation involving a financial actor or other person as referred to in Article 61 of Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046;

(7) ‘constituent entity’ means an entity that constitutes a Private Member of the Joint Undertaking, pursuant to the statutes of each Private Member;

(8) ‘consortium of private partners’ means an association of Union legal entities coming together for the purpose of acquiring jointly with the Joint Undertaking an industrial-grade supercomputer; one or more of these private partners may be participating in the Private Members of the Joint Undertaking;

(9) ‘EuroHPC supercomputer’ means any computing system which is fully owned by the Joint Undertaking or co-owned with other Participating States or a consortium of private partners and which is a classical supercomputer (high-end supercomputer, industrial-grade supercomputer, AI-optimised supercomputer or mid-range supercomputer), a hybrid classical-quantum computer, a quantum computer or a quantum simulator;

(10) ‘exascale’ means a performance level capable of executing ten to the power of eighteen operations per second (or 1 Exaflop);

(11) ‘high-end supercomputer’ means a world-class computing system developed with the most advanced technology available at a given point in time and achieving at least exascale levels of performance or beyond (i.e. post-exascale) for applications addressing problems of greater complexity;

(12) ‘hosting consortium’ means a group of Participating States or a consortium of private partners that have agreed to contribute to the acquisition and operation of a EuroHPC supercomputer, including any organisations representing these Participating States;

(13) ‘hosting entity’ means a legal entity which includes facilities to host and operate a EuroHPC supercomputer and which is established in a Participating State that is a Member State;

(14) ‘hyper-connected’ means a communication capability of transferring data at 10 to the power of twelve bits per second (1 Terabit per second) or beyond;

(15) ‘industrial-grade supercomputer’ means at least a mid-range supercomputer specifically designed with security, confidentiality and data integrity requirements for industrial users that are more demanding than for a scientific use;

(16) ‘in-kind contributions to indirect actions’ funded from Horizon Europe means contributions by the Participating State or the Private Members of the Joint Undertaking or their constituent entities or their affiliated entities, consisting of the eligible costs incurred by them in implementing indirect actions less the contribution of that Joint Undertaking, of the Participating States of that Joint Undertaking and of any other Union contribution to those costs;

(17) ‘in-kind contributions to actions’ funded from the Digital Europe Programme or the Connecting Europe Facility means contributions by the Participating State or the Private Members of the Joint Undertaking or their constituent entities or their affiliated entities, consisting of the eligible costs incurred by them in implementing part of the activities of the Joint Undertaking less the contribution of that Joint Undertaking, of the Participating States of that Joint Undertaking and of any other Union contribution to those costs;

(18) ‘mid-range supercomputer’ means a world-class supercomputer with at most one order of magnitude lower performance level than a high-end supercomputer;

(19) ‘national High Performance Computing Competence Centre’ means a legal entity, or a consortium of legal entities, established in a Participating State, associated with a national supercomputing centre of that Participating State, providing users from industry, including SMEs, academia, and public administrations with access on demand to the supercomputers and to the latest High Performance Computing technologies, tools, applications and services, and offering expertise, skills, training, networking and outreach;

(19a) ‘National Quantum Competence Centre’ means a legal entity, or a consortium of legal entities, established in a Participating State, providing users from industry, including SMEs, academia and research-performing organisations, and public administrations with access on demand to quantum technologies, tools, applications and services, as well as to national or European quantum infrastructures, and offering expertise, skills, training, networking and outreach;

(20) ‘observer State’ means a country eligible to participate in the actions of the Joint Undertaking funded by Horizon Europe or the Digital Europe Programme that is not a Participating State;

(21) ‘Participating State’ means a country that is a member of the Joint Undertaking;

(22) ‘performance level’ means the number of floating point operations per second (flops) that a supercomputer can execute;

(23) ‘Private Member’ means any member of the Joint Undertaking other than the Union or Participating States;

(24) ‘quantum computer’ means a computing device that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve certain particular tasks using therefore fewer computational resources than classical computers;

(25) ‘quantum simulator’ means a highly controllable quantum device that allows to obtain insights into properties of complex quantum systems or to solve specific computational problems inaccessible to classical computers;

(26) ‘security of the supply chain’ of a EuroHPC supercomputer means the measures to include in the selection of any supplier of this supercomputer to ensure the availability of components, technologies, systems and knowhow required in the acquisition and operation of this supercomputer; this includes measures for mitigating the risks related to eventual disruptions in the supply of such components, technologies, and systems, including price changes or lower performance or alternative sources of supply; it covers the whole lifetime of the EuroHPC supercomputer;

(27) ‘Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda’ means the document covering the duration of Horizon Europe that identifies the key priorities and the essential technologies and innovations required to achieve the objectives of the Joint Undertaking;

(28) ‘multiannual strategic programme’ means a document laying out a strategy for all the activities of the Joint Undertaking;

(29) ‘supercomputing’ means computing at performance levels requiring the massive integration of individual computing elements, including quantum components, for solving problems which cannot be handled by standard computing systems;

(30) ‘total cost of ownership’ of a EuroHPC supercomputer means the acquisition costs plus the operating costs, including maintenance, until the ownership of the supercomputer is transferred to the hosting entity or is sold, or until the supercomputer is decommissioned without transfer of ownership;

(31) ‘work programme’ means the document referred to in Article 2, point (25), of Regulation (EU) 2021/695 or, where relevant, the document which also functions as the work programme referred to in Article 24 of Regulation (EU) 2021/694, or Article 19 of Regulation (EU) 2021/1153.

Article 3

Mission and objectives

The Joint Undertaking shall have the following overall objectives:

(a) to contribute to the implementation of Regulation (EU) 2021/695 and in particular Article 3 thereof, to deliver scientific, economic, environmental, technological and societal impact from the Union’s investments in research and innovation, so as to strengthen the scientific and technological bases of the Union, deliver on the Union strategic priorities and contribute to the realisation of Union objectives and policies, and to contribute to tackling global challenges, including the Sustainable Development Goals by following the principles of the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (²);

(b) to develop close cooperation and ensure coordination with other European Partnerships, including through joint calls, as well as to seek synergies with relevant activities and programmes at Union, national, and regional level, in particular with those supporting the deployment of innovative solutions, education and regional development, where relevant;

(c) to develop, deploy, extend and maintain in the Union an integrated, demand-oriented and user-driven hyper-connected world-class supercomputing and data infrastructure;

(d) to federate the hyper-connected supercomputing and data infrastructure and interconnect it with the European data spaces and cloud ecosystem for providing computing and data services to a wide range of public and private users in Europe;

(e) to promote scientific excellence and support the uptake and systematic use of research and innovation results generated in the Union;

(f) to further develop and support a highly competitive and innovative supercomputing and data ecosystem broadly distributed in Europe contributing to the scientific and digital leadership of the Union, capable of autonomously producing computing technologies and architectures and their integration on leading computing systems, and advanced applications optimised for these systems;

(fa) to support state-of-the-art fundamental and applied research and innovation in quantum technologies, their transition from the ‘lab-to-the-fab’ and their deployment, uptake and integration in world-class quantum infrastructures, for building a dynamic, innovative, sustainable and resilient quantum ecosystem across the Union, and for ensuring scientific and industrial leadership, competitiveness, strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty of the Union in quantum computing, communication and sensing;

(g) to widen the use of supercomputing services and the development of key skills that European science and industry need;

(h) to develop and operate the AI factories, and to support the establishment of, and access to, AI gigafactories and their services, with a view to building a dynamic, innovative, sustainable and resilient AI ecosystem across the Union and ensuring scientific and industrial leadership.

Article 4

Pillars of activity

The Joint Undertaking shall implement the mission referred to in Article 3 according to the following pillars of activities:

(a) administration pillar, covering the general activities for the operation and management of the Joint Undertaking;

(b) infrastructure pillar, encompassing the activities for the acquisition, deployment, upgrading and operation of the secure, hyper-connected world-class supercomputing, quantum computing and data infrastructure, including the promotion of the uptake and systematic use of research and innovation results generated in the Union;

(c) federation of supercomputing services pillar, covering all activities for providing Union-wide access to federated, secure supercomputing and data resources and services throughout Europe for the research and scientific community, industry, including SMEs, and the public sector, in particular in cooperation with PRACE and GÉANT; those activities shall include: (i) support to the interconnection of the High Performance Computing, quantum computing and data resources owned fully or partially by the Joint Undertaking or made available on a voluntary basis by the Participating States; (ii) support to the interconnection of the supercomputing, and quantum computing data infrastructures with the Union’s common European data spaces and federated, secure cloud and data infrastructures; (iii) support to the development, acquisition and operation of a platform for the seamless federation and secure service provisioning of supercomputing and quantum computing service and data infrastructure, establishing a one-stop shop access point for any supercomputing or data service managed by the Joint Undertaking, providing any user with a single point of entry;

(d) technology pillar, addressing ambitious research and innovation activities for developing a world-class, competitive and innovative supercomputing ecosystem across Europe addressing hardware and software technologies, and their integration into computing systems, covering the whole scientific and industrial value chain, for contributing to the Union’s strategic autonomy; it shall also focus on energy-efficient High Performance Computing technologies, contributing to environmental sustainability; those activities shall address inter alia: (i) low-power micro-processing components, interconnection components, system architecture and related technologies such as novel algorithms, software codes, tools, and environments; (ii) emerging computing paradigms and their integration into leading supercomputing systems through a co-design approach; these technologies shall be linked with the development, acquisition and deployment of high-end supercomputers, including quantum computers, and infrastructures; (iii) technologies and systems for the interconnection and operation of classical supercomputing systems with other, often complementary computing technologies, such as quantum computing or other emerging computing technologies and ensure their effective operation; (iv) new algorithms and software technologies that offer substantial performance increases;