High Performance Counting (HPC) is currently recognised as a key technology supporting basic and applied research in scientific disciplines and industry. In an effort to strengthen their competitiveness, European, Chinese, Japanese and American initiatives have invested significant funds in building their HPC systems in order to maximise their computational performance over the past two decades. Neighbouring EU Member States, including the Czech Republic, have done the same. Slovakia, through its size and open economy, is directly exposed to the changes that the global economy, society and climate are undergoing. Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, high performance data analytics, robotics, nanotechnologies or blockchain have and will in the future have a major impact on the successful transformation of industry, employment, science and research and society as a whole. For Slovakia’s success in this digital transformation, it will be essential to build and develop an innovative ecosystem based on a partnership of private, academic and public sectors. The subject of this project is the creation of the National Competence Centre in the field of HPC (namely its technical provision) based on the priorities of the Digital Strategy of Slovakia. The Competence Centre will focus on supporting (today) the most important business sectors (production, new materials, financial sector), in the coming years, will create a platform for the efficient adoption and use of HPC and new digital technologies in all sectors of industry with innovation potential and demand for its services; however, it will also support the adoption and use of HPC in the public and academia sectors. However, in order to achieve these objectives, access to a modern and sufficiently powerful HPC system is needed, which will be accessible to the clients of the Competence Centre. The NSCC building will be carried out by involving multiple resources – a key part of the necessary personnel capacities will be covered through the submitted H2020 grant (within the consortium of European competence centres for HPC), the operation of the systems will be covered by the applicant’s resources.
