Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 February 2024
646. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science if he is confident the Irish research community is 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. [7706/24]
View answerMembership of the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) has directly benefited the Irish research community. Working with Participating States, EuroHPC has built a world-leading ecosystem of supercomputers and related infrastructure in Europe. Through EuroHPC Ireland’s research community can access a number of world-class supercomputers far more powerful than what is publicly available within Ireland. Researchers in Irish institutions have been successful in securing time on these machines through competitive calls.
EuroHPC has actively supported Irish researchers’ access to these supercomputers by funding relevant programmes at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) under their competence centre initiative. Co-funded by EuroHPC and my Department, ICHEC runs an Academic Flagship programme which prepares Irish academic user communities to compete for the large-scale systems offered by EuroHPC. Academic Flagship projects have included research on artificial intelligence and deep learning, astronomical modelling and particle physics.
The competence centre programme at ICHEC, supported by EuroHPC, has also established the HPC Innovation Hub which is directed at public sector organisations. This programme has enabled public sector organisations to progress their digital transformations using high-performance computing.
EuroHPC has also provided opportunities for Ireland’s high-performance computing community to collaborate on projects with European partners. ICHEC is currently part of a consortium led by France and co-funded by EuroHPC to deploy a quantum computer. This is cutting-edge work to develop quantum computers which will be made available for research and development purposes to a wide range of European users.
