SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 13 (SeeNews) – The European Commission said on Friday that Bulgaria has become the tenth EU member state to sign the European declaration on high-performance computing (EuroHPC).
“High-performance computing is pervasive in our daily lives: from personalised medicine to weather forecast, cybersecurity and to cars and planes simulation and design,” Mariya Gabriel, commissioner in charge of the digital economy and society portfolio, said in a statement, after the declaration was signed in Sofia by Bulgarian education minister Krasimir Valchev.
“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,” Gabriel added.
The objective of the declaration is the establishment of a cooperation framework between the signatory countries to acquire and deploy an integrated exascale supercomputing infrastructure.
The European Commission, together with countries who have signed the declaration, are expected to prepare by end-2017 a roadmap with implementation milestones to deploy the European exascale supercomputing infrastructure.
The aim is to have EU exascale supercomputers in the global top three by 2022, the Commission said.
The EuroHPC declaration was originally launched and signed in Rome in March 2017 by France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. Subsequently, Belgium signed the declaration in June and Slovenia in July.
Bulgaria will preside over the Council of the EU from January 1, 2018. The country is a part of a “trio” with currently presiding Estonia and Austria, which will hold the Council’s rotating presidency from July 1, 2018.
The trio’s programme will focus on security and strengthening EU's external borders, economic growth and competitiveness, as well as stabilising neighbouring regions, the Bulgarian government said in June.