Slovenia has successfully applied for EU funds to develop a high-performance supercomputer with an artificial intelligence factory. The EU will chip in €67.5 million for the €150 million project promoted by the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC).

The Slovenian project has achieved the best result among all applicants in the call, scoring 82 out of the possible 100 points, according to Digital Transformation Minister Ksenija Klampfer.

The European Commission is expected to announce the full results of the call by the end of the week and the final amount of the EU contribution will be known in the coming weeks.

This is the "result of hard work, Slovenian knowledge and vision," Klampfer said in announcing the news on 11 March, noting that the procedure required a lot of coordination between the largest organisations and experts in the field.

The supercomputer will act as a central platform for advanced research and applications and will support both business and academic partners.

"This project is not just an investment in technology, but in the future of young people and in Slovenia's position as a technological and scientific hub in Europe," Prime Minister Robert Golob said.

The application was prepared by the Institute of Information Science (IZUM), which has been operating an EU co-funded supercomputer in Maribor, named Vega, since April 2021.

The project includes the Jožef Stefan Institute, the ARNES research network, the universities of Ljubljana, Maribor, Nova Gorica and Primorska, the Novo Mesto Faculty of Information Studies, the Ljubljana Technology Park, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

IZUM director Aleš Bošnjak said the success in the call should also be attributed to the fact that Slovenia established a supercomputer in 2021 as the first out of eight applicants.

16 times more powerful then existing supercomputer

The new supercomputer will be approximately 16 times more powerful than Vega, and will be fully adapted to AI services and solutions.

It will build on the existing capabilities of Vega and will enable complex research and the development of advanced solutions in AI, big data analysis, biotechnology and environmental sciences.

Of the €150 million, €10 million will go for the AI factory, while the total amount also includes €5 million that Slovenia will contribute to the Bologna-based supercomputer centre Cineca HPC.

The supercomputer will focus on the green transition, biomedicine and the digital society, and will be used to develop different applications and AI models for these areas.

The second phase of the project, valued at €25 million, includes an upgrade of the hardware with the most advanced graphics processors, two years after the supercomputer and AI factory become operational.

The supercomputer will be located in an ARNES-operated data centre near a Maribor hydropower plant because it will consume a lot of electricity. It is expected to start trial operation in June 2026.

The supercomputer will be managed, maintained and administered by IZUM with the assistance of ARNES and the Jožef Stefan Institute.