The FF4EuroHPC project started at the beginning of September 2020. As a part of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, under the auspices of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, has been awarded a three-year grant of EUR 9.9 million to start a new European consortium, called FF4EuroHPC.

The key concept behind FF4EuroHPC is to demonstrate to European SMEs ways to optimize their performance with the use of advanced HPC (High Performance Computing) services (e.g., modelling & simulation, data analytics, machine-learning and AI, and possibly combinations thereof) and thereby take advantage of these innovative ICT solutions for business benefit.

Two open calls had been organised by the project, with the aim to create two tranches of application experiments within diverse industry sectors. The first Open Call was successful; 68 high-quality submissions involving 202 partners from 25 European countries (plus Canada) were received, and 16 experiments were selected for funding in an evaluation process involving 37 external reviewers.

The open call will target experiments of the highest quality, involving innovative, agile SMEs with work plans built around innovation objectives, arising from the use of advanced HPC services. Experiments present the heart of the project and will be the main outputs of FF4EuroHPC, which is a successor of the Fortissimo and Fortissimo2 projects.

Proposals are sought that address business challenges from European SMEs covering varied application domains, preference being given to engineering and manufacturing, or sectors able to demonstrate fast economic growth or particular economic impact for Europe. Priority will be given to consortia centred on SMEs that are new to the use of advanced HPC services.

The second Open Call was opened on 22nd June 2021 and will be closed on 29th September 2021. The indicative total funding budget is € 5 Mio.

More information is provided on the project webpage www.ff4eurohpc.eu and on project social media profiles (Twitter, LinkedIn - @FF4EuroHPC).