High Performance Computing (HPC) has quietly become one of the key pillars of modern societies. From climate modelling and weather forecasting to drug discovery, artificial intelligence, industrial design, or energy optimisation, supercomputers now underpin some of the most critical scientific, economic, and societal advances. As data volumes grow exponentially and computational demands continue to rise, access to powerful, efficient, and scalable HPC infrastructures is no longer a luxury; it is a strategic necessity.
Beyond its many applications, HPC has also become a strategic asset. The ability to build and operate powerful supercomputers increasingly affects technological independence and Europe’s position on the global stage. With major investments coming from the United States and Asia, Europe faces the challenge of developing its own technologies while staying competitive at the highest level.
EUPEX, a European project funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, tackles this challenge head-on. Its goal is to create a pilot supercomputing platform entirely based on European technologies, from the hardware to the software stack. The platform will use new ARM-based processors designed for the performance, energy efficiency, and scalability needed in next-generation HPC systems, offering a tangible step toward Europe’s computing independence.
The pilot will be coupled with European-developed software solutions, providing a realistic environment to test readiness, scalability, and operational reliability. In doing so, EUPEX Pilot aims not only to prove that Europe can deliver competitive, high-performance supercomputing infrastructures, but also to develop and demonstrate European expertise in microelectronics, system architecture, and HPC software. The project also explicitly prepares applications and European users to efficiently exploit future Exascale machines, providing opportunities for co-design and early testing of workflows and software on the new platform.
Bringing together leading European research centres, technology providers, and industrial partners, EUPEX Pilot sets the stage for the next era of European supercomputers, showing that a fully European stack can operate at scale and paving the way for larger, sovereign HPC systems.
