June 19 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria will invest 12 million euro ($13.4 million) in a supercomputing centre in Sofia that will be launched by the end of 2020, European commissioner for digital economy Mariya Gabriel has said.
The European Commission will provide 6 million euro in co-financing for the project, Gabriel said during a news conference on Monday attended by Roberto Viola, general director of communication, networks, content and technology at the European Commission.
Supercomputers in eight EU member states are expected to be operational in the second half of 2022, the Commission said in its European strategy for high-performance computing published earlier this month. The goal is to establish an integrated world-class supercomputing and data infrastructure and to support a highly competitive and innovative high-performance computing and big data ecosystem, the Commission said in its statement.
"During the next programming period, 2.7 billion euro are earmarked for supercomputers under the new Digital Europe programme," Gabriel said.
On June 7, Bulgaria's capital was selected as one of the locations for the future supercomputing centres, along with Barcelona (Spain), Bologna (Italy), Kajaani (Finland), Minho (Portugal), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Bissen (Luxembourg) and Maribor (Slovenia).
The sites are divided into two groups, with Bulgaria being member of the second group with medium to high-range supercomputers that have a capacity of 4 million billion operations per second.
In November 2017, when Bulgaria was the tenth member state to sign the European declaration on high-performance computing (EuroHPC), the Commission said that it aims to have EU exascale supercomputers in the global top three by 2022. Some of the many ways in which high-performance computers can be used for the benefit of science, industry, national security and defence include drug discovery and design, prevention of cancer, of climate change issues, wind plant modelling, oil and gas exploration and cybersecurity.
($ = 0.89249 euro)