Source: EURLEX
Language: en
Format: md

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| INCEPTION IMPACT ASSESSMENT | | | |
| Title of the initiative | Common European initiative on high performance computing | | |
| Lead DG – responsible unit – AP Number | CONNECT – Digital Excellence & Science Infrastructure – High Performance Computing & Quantum Technology (CNECT-C2) | Date of roadmap | 3 August 2017 |
| Likely Type of initiative | Legislative proposal | | |
| Indicative Planning | 12/2017 | | |
| Additional Information | - | | |
| This Inception Impact Assessment aims to inform stakeholders about the Commission's work in order to allow them to provide feedback on the intended initiative and to participate effectively in future consultation activities. Stakeholders are in particular invited to provide views on the Commission's understanding of the problem and possible solutions and to make available any relevant information that they may have, including on possible impacts of the different options. The Inception Impact Assessment is provided for information purposes only and its content may change. This Inception Impact Assessment does not prejudge the final decision of the Commission on whether this initiative will be pursued or on its final content. | | | |

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| A. Context, Problem definition and Subsidiarity Check |
| Context |
| The Commission adopted on 19/04/2016 the European Cloud Initiative, as part of its Digitising European Industry strategy, which was endorsed by the Council and the European Parliament, with the aim of building a world-class European High Performance Computing (HPC) and Big Data infrastructure ecosystem. On 10/05/2017, in its communication on the Mid-Term Review of the Digital Single Market Strategy, the Commission announced its intention to propose by end-2017 a legal instrument for a procurement framework for an integrated exascale supercomputing and data infrastructure. Against the above background, the Commission started an impact assessment of the available policy options in order to identify the best possible instrument for the support to the development of the integrated European High Performance Computing and Big Data infrastructure ecosystem. |
| Problem the initiative aims to tackle |
| Europe's scientific capabilities, industrial competitiveness and development towards a data economy critically depend on access to world-leading High Performance Computing (HPC) data and computing infrastructures, which use technologies developed outside Europe. The infrastructure needs to be regularly upgraded to keep pace with the growing demands and complexity of problems to be solved. The costs of building and maintaining such infrastructures are increasing to a level, where nowadays no Member State can develop the necessary HPC ecosystem on its own in a competitive timeframe with respect to the USA, China or Japan.  Funding for High Performance Computing in the EU and Member States (MS) declined heavily from 2013 onwards, and the EU is now quickly losing its position in the top supercomputing league as it failed to continuously invest in its HPC ecosystem and to reap the benefits of its rich intellectual property assets in this field: currently, none of the 10 leading supercomputers in the world is anymore in the EU (against 5 in the USA, 2 in Japan, 1 in Switzerland and the 2 top systems located in China). Moreover, Europe depends ever more on other regions for critical technology, on the supply of key technological components for its supercomputing infrastructure and on the access to the most advanced computing facilities.  At EU level a wide range of existing funding tools and instruments have already been used to foster under Horizon 2020 High Performance Computing research and innovation, as well as a limited support to procurement of infrastructure. This is complemented by the activities of the public-private-partnership ETP4HPC and at MS level by the organisation PRACE. However, there is no common strategy in place to strengthen European independent access to critical HPC technology while contributing to the transition of the European leading supercomputers to the new computing generation. As a consequence to large extend the efforts of the EU and the MS are uncoordinated, not synchronized and do not take advantage of economies of scale, making it difficult to effectively develop a European HPC ecosystem and to resolve the problems mentioned above. |
| Subsidiarity check (and legal basis) |
| The legal basis of a EuroHPC Joint Undertaking initiative would be Article 187 TFEU of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Knowledge and resources available in Europe (through existing initiatives such as PRACE [1](#footnote3) , GÉANT [2](#footnote4)  and ETP4HPC [3](#footnote5) ) need to be put together for the building of a leading edge High Performance Computing ecosystem across all value chain segments (with existing initiatives as key investors). National resources alone are insufficient. EU coordination of investments, resulting technologies, services and skills is necessary to have HPC computing and data infrastructures in Europe on a par with the USA, China or Japan.  The importance of High Performance Computing has grown in Europe in recent years to such a level that High Performance Computing is essential for science and industry to stay globally competitive. This has led to a common understanding that the "Europeanisation" of this domain via a shared infrastructure and common use of existing capabilities would benefit everyone. This also applies to MS with difficulties in creating self-sufficient national HPC infrastructures whereas they can make valuable contributions to and benefit from EU-level HPC capabilities.  The political support from Member States on EuroHPC has been explicitly laid out by the Council [4](#footnote6)  and, by the European Parliament [5](#footnote7) . Moreover, nine Member States [6](#footnote8)  signed in the first half of 2017 the EuroHPC Declaration, a multi-government agreement where they commit to build and deploy state-of-the-art (at the "exascale") computing and data infrastructures in Europe. |
| B. Objectives and Policy options |
| The objective is the creation of a legal entity to coordinate national and European efforts to build a High Performance Computing ecosystem (hardware, software, applications, skills, services and interconnections); to define an integrated European HPC research and innovation agenda; to support the development and procurement of a world class HPC and data infrastructure and their interconnection; to provide and manage access to the HPC infrastructure,.  This legal entity will pool the necessary funding, will gather the necessary resources and capabilities and will close the chain from research and development to the delivery and operation of exascale HPC systems co-designed by users and suppliers. As it can act as the owner of the machines funded jointly by its members, it can leverage the acquisition of the machines to include to the extent possible the results stemming from the R&D&I programmes it supports. It will also facilitate the non-discriminatory access to the machines jointly funded. The risks of developing the exascale machines would not be borne by a single country but taken over by the EuroHCPC Joint Undertaking.  The estimated budget for the EuroHPC instrument in the financial period 2019-2020 is €480 million from the EU budget (through the Connecting Europe Facility and Horizon 2020 in their respective work programmes for 2019-2020), supported by another €500 million investment from the Member States and matched by equivalent industry funds.  Policy options:  Option 0 – Business-as-usual  Continue with individual Member State initiatives, current funding from H2020 and CEF, coupled with current cooperation agreements such as ETP4HPC, PRACE and GÉANT. This does not allow the synchronisation of the EU investments via the current instruments, neither the coordination of the Commission activities with the Member States. Moreover they are subject to different budgetary and implementation constraints, even for the activities funded by the EU programmes. It renders difficult the pooling together of the required EU, Member State and industrial resources and hampers procurement at EU-level. Finally, their implementation makes it difficult to ensure continuity of investments already carried out in previous steps. The drawbacks of this situation are also underlined by the EuroHPC Declaration.  Option 1 – EU-wide Collaborative Effort on High Performance Computing: European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC)  A European Research Infrastructure Consortium is a legal entity under Union law with the main objective of pooling Member States' efforts to establish and operate a Research Infrastructure of European importance on a non-economic basis. However a direct EU contribution to an ERIC is in principle not foreseen. Moreover, the main task of an ERIC to establish and operate a research infrastructure, rather than support the implementation of a research programme through grants. It might also prove difficult to widen the use of the HPC systems to industry and the public sector. Furthermore, a European Research Infrastructure Consortium is by design not addressing private funding, in turn restraining the participation and financial contribution by industry players.  Option 2 – EU-wide Collaborative Effort on High Performance Computing: A European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG)    A European Economic Interest Grouping is a type of legal entity under Council Regulation 2137/85, designed to make it easier for companies in different countries to do business together or to form consortia to take part in EU programmes. The European Economic Interest Grouping is eligible to receive Union funds and to participate to procurement procedures. However, this option would not permit the effective synchronisation of investments in High Performance Computing, nor the coordination of procurement activities with the Member States.  Option 3 – EU-wide Collaborative Effort on High Performance Computing: Joint Undertaking (JU)  This option capitalises on Member State initiatives and collaboration, fragmented as they are, in order to use them as a basis to build the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking under Article 187 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It would address European coordination and adequate financing to accomplish the general objectives of EuroHPC. Such a Joint Undertaking could be tailored to the specific needs of EuroHPC and allow pooling funds from EU, national and private sources for:  setting up an operational structure able to support an integrated European HPC research and innovation agenda for the development of hardware and software components, systems and applications;  procuring and deploying exascale and post-exascale supercomputers and federating European and national infrastructures;  providing access to the HPC infrastructure;  developing further HPC-enabled applications and the skills required for doing so, as well as promoting a wide use of High Performance Computing by scientific communities, public and private partners.  The Joint Undertaking would be a funding body in the meaning of Article 9.2 of the H2020 establishing regulation and Article 58.1 of the Financial Regulation, i.e. the Commission would entrust part of the implementation of Horizon 2020 to it. The Joint Undertaking would not itself undertake research and development activities (no "direct" research). It would also act as procurement agent of the HPC infrastructure that it will subsequently own. The Joint Undertaking would have to endorse the risks linked to the ownership and operation of the infrastructure, risks linked to financial management and liability. As for existing Joint Undertakings part of its administrative costs would be covered by the H2020 contribution, the other part by the contribution of its other members.  The option that no, or not enough, amounts are allocated for High Performance Computing in the post-2020 financing period will also be assessed. |
| C. Preliminary Assessment of Expected Impacts [max 20 lines] |
| Likely economic impacts |
| Without an effective instrument to coordinate and synchronise the different actions, and pool the resources at European level in an effective way, Europe will not reap the benefits of a strategic technology such as High Performance Computing. Europe will increasingly depend on external critical technology and know-how, which will seriously hamper European capacities to innovate and to be competitive in the global digital economy. The results of European research will not be exploited in Europe due to our lack of technical and infrastructure capabilities.  High Performance Computing effectively addresses a number of today's main societal and scientific challenges such as early detection and treatment of diseases, deciphering the human brain, forecasting climate evolution, space observation, preventing and managing large-scale natural disasters, etc. Its use has a critical impact in the manufacturing and engineering industry, by significantly reducing research and innovation costs and development cycles; for example a) High Performance Computing has enabled automakers to reduce the time for developing new vehicle platforms from an average of 60 to 24 months improving crashworthiness, environmental friendliness, and passenger comfort; b) at a macroeconomic level, it has been shown that returns on investment in HPC are extremely high and that the companies and countries that most invest in HPC spearhead science and economic success7. |
| Likely social impacts |
| The establishment of an instrument integrating and synchronising the efforts at EU level will provide an effective foundation for further EU-wide innovation and growth of the digitised industry and its myriad of applications, with important positive social impacts in many areas: health and new drugs, personalised medicine, understanding the functioning of the human brain and its diseases, security, meteorology and climate change assessment, space, energy, transport, etc. |
| Likely environmental impacts |
| An integrating instrument will make possible that in key areas of High Performance Computing applications such as energy, transport or climate change, the capability to more realistically model complex phenomena by means of High Performance Computing and associated data infrastructures is likely to significantly improve the environmental footprint of European industry and society at large. The High Performance Computing technology developed will also give Europe a leading edge in digital areas with important environmental impacts like green data centres. |
| Likely impacts on fundamental rights |
| The initiative will improve European digital capabilities that support a safer and more knowledgeable society. |
| Likely impacts on simplification and/or administrative burden |
| The establishment of the EuroHPC instrument would provide a significant simplification and reduction of administrative burden when compared to the present situation. It should also simplify the coordination of national procurement processes in acquiring leading edge High Performance Computing systems at EU level. |
| D. Data Collection and Better Regulation Instruments |
| Impact assessment |
| An impact assessment is being prepared to support the preparation of this initiative, based upon existing and future data collections and an analysis of the feedback received by stakeholders. |
| Data collection |
| The following sources of pertinent information and data already exist:  Commission Communication on High Performance Computing, COM(2012) 45 final  Commission Communication on the European Cloud Initiative, COM(2016) 178 final  Staff Working Document accompanying the Commission Communication on the European Cloud Initiative, SWD(2016) 106 final, SWD(2016) 107 final  Findings of PRACE Days in Barcelona, 15-18/05/2017  Findings of European Open Science Cloud summit, 12/06/2017  Study for the Commission on "High Performance Computing in the EU: Progress on the Implementation of the European High Performance Computing Strategy" (2015)  Declaration – Cooperation framework on High Performance Computing, Rome, 23 March 2017 [7](#footnote9)  European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (ETP4HPC) – Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) [8](#footnote10)  Big Data Value Association (BDVA) – Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) [9](#footnote11)    Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) on HPC and Big Data Enabled Applications IPCEI-HPC-BDA [10](#footnote12)  Additional evidence will be sought from the following forthcoming source:  Study for the European Investment Bank (EIB) on "Access-to-Finance Conditions for the Deployment of European Cloud and High Performance Computing Infrastructure and Services" (forthcoming).  The impact assessment will be accompanied by an evidence gathering annex to complement the problem definition with evidence of the past and demonstrating the EU added value. The initiative should also draw upon relevant evidence from the evaluation concerning Article 187 TFEU undertakings established in the context of Horizon 2020. |
| Consultation strategy [max 10 lines] |
| It is proposed to use a targeted public consultation reaching out to all the key stakeholders with expertise in High Performance Computing, or which would be affected by the initiative: public-private-partnerships in High Performance Computing and Big Data, the operators of supercomputing centres, the High Performance Computing Centres-of-Excellence, the scientific communities, suppliers, industry associations, software vendors and application designers, High Performance Computing service providers and High Performance Computing intermediaries. Given its specificity, only this specialised group of stakeholders is concerned directly with High Performance Computing. |
| Will an Implementation plan be established? |
| Yes. The plan will list the various actions necessary to implement the legislative act and identify the main implementation challenges in terms of compliance, technical challenges and timing. Specific mechanisms for Commission and MS support action will be provided. |

:   [(1)](#footnoteref3)
     PRACE (http://www.prace-ri.eu/), the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, aims at creating a persistent pan-European research infrastructure of supercomputers.
:   [(2)](#footnoteref4)
     GÉANT (https://www.geant.org/) is the pan-European data network for the research and education community linking national research and education networks across Europe.
:   [(3)](#footnoteref5)
     European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing: http://www.etp4hpc.eu/
:   [(4)](#footnoteref6)
     The Competitiveness Council on 29-30 May 2013 adopted conclusions on the ECI Communication, highlighting the role of HPC in the EU's innovation capacity and stressing its strategic importance to the EU's industrial and scientific capabilities as well as to its citizens.
:   [(5)](#footnoteref7)
     Report on the European Cloud Initiative (2016/2145(INI)), Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, 26.1.2017
:   [(6)](#footnoteref8)
    France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia
:   [(7)](#footnoteref9)
     http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc\_id=43815
:   [(8)](#footnoteref10)
     http://www.etp4hpc.eu/en/sra.html
:   [(9)](#footnoteref11)
     http://www.bdva.eu/?q=SRIA
:   [(10)](#footnoteref12)
     https://hpc.uni.lu/blog/2016/ipcei-hpc-bda-project-released/

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