EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities for the "Post-exascale HPC (CSA)" Grant

1. Single Market Access – 450 + Million End-Users & Data Holders

• Pan-European user base for demonstrators: Road-mapping activities can crowd-source requirements from Europe’s diverse verticals (health, automotive, aerospace, energy), producing a consensus spec that is immediately relevant to the whole Single Market.

• Critical mass of industrial data: Engagement with EU flagship data spaces (HealthData@EU, Manufacturing Data Space, Mobility Data Space) allows the consortium to access heterogeneous, GDPR-compliant datasets to stress-test post-exascale/AI workloads.

• One-stop standardisation: Recommendations produced under the CSA can shape CEN/CENELEC and ETSI specifications, accelerating market uptake across 27 Member States without re-certification costs.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• Mandatory multinational consortium: The call encourages partnerships between EuroHPC JU members, Quantum Flagship actors, AI Factories and Centres of Excellence, fostering a distributed but coherent innovation chain.

• Researcher mobility: Existing EU programmes (Marie Skłodowska-Curie, EuroHPC training vouchers) can be woven into the roadmap to create “post-exascale fellowships”, circulating talent among leading labs in France (GENCI), Germany (JSC), Spain (BSC) and beyond.

• Shared testbeds: Leveraging EU Tier-0/1 supercomputers (LEONARDO, LUMI, JUWELS) and upcoming Quantum Pilots provides a unique federated playground not replicable at national level.

3. Alignment with EU Strategies & Legislation

• Digital Europe & EuroHPC Regulation: Directly supports the objective of a world-class HPC/AI ecosystem and the Chips Act ambition to secure advanced compute supply chains.

• Green Deal & Fit-for-55: Roadmap can embed energy-aware architectures (liquid cooling, mixed-precision, in-memory compute) contributing to the EU target of 55 % emissions reduction by 2030.

• Apply AI & GenAI4EU: Positions Europe to train sovereign foundation models on EU supercomputers, ensuring compliance with the AI Act.

• Open Strategic Autonomy: By focusing on RISC-V, photonics and quantum accelerators, the action reduces dependence on extra-EU IP cores.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Benefits

• Single GDPR & AI-Act compliance layer: A unified legal framework simplifies cross-border AI/HPC service provision and data movement.

• State-Aid clarity: Using an EU grant under Horizon removes uncertainties around national subsidy rules.

• Cyber-resilience Act synergies: Early alignment of post-exascale security requirements with forthcoming EU certification schemes strengthens market confidence.

5. Access to Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• 500+ HPC-related SMEs & 150+ Digital Innovation Hubs: The CSA can broker matchmaking events to integrate SMEs into future AI Factories/Gigafactories supply chains.

• Living labs & EDIHs: Pilot AI-driven HPC-as-a-Service across Europe’s network of European Digital Innovation Hubs to validate business models.

• World-class science: Tap into ERC grantees and Horizon Europe clusters (e.g., Cluster 4 Materials/Fotonics) for cross-fertilisation.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Digital Europe Programme (DEP): Coordinate with DEP cloud-to-edge projects to integrate post-exascale nodes into the European data infrastructure.

• CEF-Digital & Connecting Europe: Align roadmap milestones with pan-EU 400 Gbps backbone deployment schedules.

• ERDF & Just Transition: Encourage Member States to co-invest in regional quantum/HPC competence centres identified by the CSA.

• EIB & InvestEU: Use the roadmap as bankable evidence for large-scale AI Gigafactory capital expenditures.

7. Scale & Impact Potential

• EU-wide deployment templates: The CSA’s deliverables (reference architectures, procurement guidelines) enable rapid replication in all Member States, de-risking public tenders.

• Global standard-setting power: Coordination with InPex and ISO/IEC JTC 1 lets Europe lead on converged HPC-AI-Quantum benchmarks.

• Economic spill-overs: A coherent roadmap could unlock an estimated €40 bn in cumulative GDP impact by 2035 through accelerated AI adoption in manufacturing and climate modelling.

8. Strategic Recommendations to Maximise EU-Level Benefit

1. Embed a “Twin Hub” structure – one policy hub in Brussels for alignment with EU institutions, one technical hub rotating among EuroHPC centres for regional inclusion.

2. Publish an open KPI dashboard keyed to EU targets (energy per FLOP, gender balance, SME participation) for transparent monitoring.

3. Create a Post-Exascale Fellowship Scheme co-funded by MSCA to future-proof skills.

4. Set up a Regulatory Sandbox under the AI Act to validate trustworthy AI in HPC environments.

5. Issue joint procurement blueprints with the EU Joint Research Centre to accelerate Member State uptake.

In summary, operating at EU scale turns the CSA into a continental convening force, aligning technology road-mapping with policy, finance and market instruments that no single country could mobilise alone.