Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 February 2024
645. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science if he is confident Irish SMEs are benefiting from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking; the involvement of private and public Irish entities to date with the undertaking; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7705/24]
View answerMembership of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) has directly benefited Irish SMEs. In particular EuroHPC has financially supported the SME Accelerator programme at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing under the European High-Performance Computing Competence Centre (EuroCC) initiative.
EuroCC is an initiative by the Joint Undertaking to build a European network of national high-performance computing (HPC) competence centres to bridge existing skills gaps. In Ireland the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) was selected to host the national competence centre, EuroCC_Ireland. EuroCC_Ireland, a project co-funded by the Department and EuroHPC, has directly supported SMEs in Ireland through the SME Accelerator programme.
The SME Accelerator provides Irish SMEs with access to HPC technical skills and infrastructure and assists with technical solutions. Under this co-funded programme SMEs receive training and one-to-one mentoring with highly skilled HPC staff employed in ICHEC. The programme also assists SMEs looking to migrate their work onto world-class EuroHPC supercomputers.
ICHEC activities as the EuroHPC competence centre include support for Irish academic and enterprise organisations using high-performance computing, high performance data analysis and artificial intelligence. The competence centre offers a broad portfolio of services in all HPC-related areas, tailored to the needs of industry, science and public administration.
