Europe aims to flagship quantum
EU-commissioner Carlos Moedas wants to create an open European Science Cloud “to make science more efficient and productive and let millions of researchers share and analyse research data in a trusted environment across technologies, disciplines and borders.” According tot he European Commission the current infrastructure to disseminate the huge amount of scientific data Europe has, is insufficient and fragmented.
Enormous benefits
The new European Open Science Cloud will offer Europe’s 1.7 million researchers and 70 million science and technology professionals a virtual environment to store, share and re-use their data across disciplines and borders. “We listened to the scientific community’s plea for an infrastructure for Open Science and with this comprehensive plan we can get down to work. The benefits of open data for Europe’s science, economy and society will be enormous,” Moedas said.
To get such an infrastructure in place, a new generation of supercomputers is needed, the Commission argues. A large investment to accelerate the nascent development of quantum technology, which is the basis for these supercomputers is therefore required.
As the Netherlands has a leading role in the research on quantum technology, the European initiative to further strengthen these scientific efforts is welcomed by minister Henk Kamp. “It is a groundbreaking technlogy which will radically alter our society and economy. The computing force of quantum technology will provide solutions for global issues like climate change, health care and safety.”
Kamp thinks the Quantum Flagship will get Europe in first place in what he calls ‘the fourth industrial revolution’. “The Netherlands named QuTech, a leader in this revolution, a national icon. With this proposal the European Commission is moving in the same direction with regards to quantum technology.”
Unlock the value of big data
The European Commission aims to develop and deploy a large scale European high performance computing, data storage and network infrastructure, by the time of 2020. EU-commissioner Gunther Oettinger has high hopes of the European Cloud Initiative. “It will unlock the value of big data by providing world-class supercomputing capability, high-speed connectivity and leading-edge data and software services for science, industry and the public sector.”
“With this initiative, our ambition is to be in the global top-three in high performance computing by 2020. We will also be looking into the potential of quantum technologies which hold the promise to solve computational problems beyond current supercomputers,” Oettinger added.
