Bulgaria joins the European cooperation on high-performance computing

Bulgaria became today the tenth Member State to sign the EuroHPC declaration on high-performance computing (HPC). The initiative aims at joining efforts to make world-class HPC infrastructure available across the EU. Bulgarian Minister for Education and Science, Krasimir Valchev signed the declaration this morning in Sofia, Bulgaria in the presence of Commissioner Gabriel in charge of Digital economy and society. Commissioner Gabriel said: “I am very pleased to welcome Bulgaria in this bold European initiative. High-performance computing is pervasive in our daily lives: from personalised medicine to weather forecast, cybersecurity and to cars and planes simulation and design. Access to HPC resources is essential for public and private users. As no Member State has the capacity to develop such computing power quickly and on their own, strong cooperation and support at European level is a must.” The EuroHPC declaration was originally launched and signed in Rome in March 2017 during the Digital Day by France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Belgium signed the declaration in June 2017 and Slovenia in July 2017. Other Member States are expected to join soon, as the top HPC infrastructure has the potential to significantly upraise industry competitiveness and EU’s innovation capacity. Switzerland has also promised to join the European common effort to deploy world-class high-performance computing infrastructure capable of at least 10¹⁸ calculations per second (so-called exascale computers). More details are available here.