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 will be organised by the project, with the aim to create two tranches of application experiments within diverse industry sectors. The open calls 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 first Open Call was opened on 2nd November 2020 and will be closed on 27th January 2021.
More information is provided in the following paragraphs.
Key Call Details
Submission Deadline: 27th January 2021, 17:00 Brussels local time
Expected duration of experiments: maximum 15 months with expected commencement 1st June 2021
Funding for Call-1: The indicative total funding budget is € 3 M.
Maximum funding request per proposal: € 200,000 (covering all participants)
Funding constraints: The maximum funding that can be allocated to any Third Party, across all experiments in which that Third Party is involved, is € 150 K. While the participation of certain FF4EuroHPC beneficiaries in experiments is eligible, the funding for their activities in experiments is not included within the budget for experiments.
It is expected that the proposed experiments should:
- Involve all necessary parties required for the effective and efficient execution of the investigation and impact demonstration to address SME business challenges through the use of HPC systems and/or advanced HPC services. Appropriate technical management within an experiment is a necessary component.
- Define the resources they need and budget for them, possibly using resources provided directly by the EuroHPC JU or through national actions such as, but not restricted to, the HPC National Competence Centres. (FF4EuroHPC will not be in a position to provide computing resources).
- Define the data protection and data/information access issues that impact its proposed work plan and ensure that the operation of the experiment adheres to those requirements.
- Generate publishable success stories – preferably in multi-media form – based on solution of the SME’s real-world problems that clearly identify the business benefits realised or obtained.
- Align, where appropriate, with regional priorities, such as industrial specialisation areas.
- Be complementary to those already included in the past Fortissimo and Fortissimo 2 projects.
It is to be noted that Engineering Consultancy companies may take the role of the industrial end-user, where that is representative of the corresponding market segment / industrial sector.
Proposal submission should be exclusively in electronic form using the proposal submission tool accessed via this link. Proposers are encouraged to submit draft versions in advance of the deadline, which may be updated (replaced) up to the submission deadline. Proposals must be submitted in English.
Should you have any doubts or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at:
Proposal Submission
Access to the proposal submission tool and detailed instructions for proposal submission, together with information about the evaluation criteria to be applied, FAQs and an evaluation check-list, are provided on the project webpage:
