The NCC will represent the focal point of national competences in HPC and provide leading-edge knowledge to enable the development of innovative solutions in their constituency, taking into account national HPC needs and requirements emanating from different user communities (industry, academia, public administrations) and application domains. The NCC will establish and maintain a network of national HPC users, promote HPC use in the private and public sector, reach out to potential new users and develop the necessary expertise for HPC applications close to the relevant national and, in collaboration with other NCCs, European communities.

Each NCC will act as an access point to the European network of NCCs and other European HPC initiatives such as the Centres of Excellence for HPC applications to ensure that local stakeholders have access to the best available support in Europe if the required expertise can not be provided by the NCC or is out of scope of the NCC’s activities. In return, NCCs will support stakeholders from other regions and countries that need their expertise coordinated through the NCC network and the complementary Coordination and Support Action CASTIEL 2. NCCs will implement a flexible and modular approach in the services to be provided, taking into account the degree of maturity of the national HPC ecosystem and in close coordination and collaboration with the other NCCs to achieve the highest possible impact and the widest possible spread of knowledge, ensure the most efficient use of NCC resources and to avoid duplication of effort among the NCCs and with other initiatives.

HPC Competence Centres will, for example, engage in the following activities:

• Facilitate access to the HPC ecosystem including testbeds, hands-on sessions on HPC, HPC application optimising and scaling by connecting national communities with other initiatives such as the European Centres of Excellence for HPC applications.
• Facilitate uptake of HPC applications by different users, including SMEs (e.g. promoting locally relevant success stories), academia and public administrations.
• Provide scientific/technical expertise/consulting through application-oriented HPC knowledge/focus (e.g. HPC and High Performance Data Analytics (HPDA), as well as access to advanced simulation and modelling algorithms, software codes and tools.
• Contribute with the expertise to the development activities (TRL 4-6) of SMEs and the public services to enable their efficient use of HPC resources (e.g., software porting and customization, deployment of advanced simulation and modelling algorithms, methods, and tools etc.).
• Provide on-site evaluations of new technologies, experimenting, proofs of concept as well as enable validation and demonstration of HPC technologies, software codes, tools, and algorithms in relevant environments.
• Facilitate access to supercomputing and data management for exploring innovation solutions of interest to end users, including SME user industries.
• Local and national training and skills development in the area of HPC and related subjects (e.g. HPDA, parallel programming, etc.), through face-to-face as well as online training (e.g. MOOC platforms).
• Awareness raising and outreach on the benefits of HPC to potential user industries, including SMEs.
• Raise awareness and support national and local communities in identifying and protecting intellectual property in an HPC context and provide advice on licensing policies in collaboration with the pan-European network of NCCs.
• Implement technology transfer activities at local/national level and the Digital Single Market.

It is required that the NCC – hosted by either one or several national organisations – is formally designated and mandated by the national authorities of the EU Member State or the EuroHPC JU Participating State.
The NCC must be established as an organisation with appropriate visibility to the national communities and an independent organisational structure.

Individual NCCs will focus on activities where local support is most effective such as communication, consultation services, support specific to the relevant national and local communities and necessary co-development to fulfill the mission of NCC.

Co-development activities with SMEs should be limited to SMEs and a maximum of 5% of the personnel resources of an NCC may be used for all direct development activities by the NCC.

The JU considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the JU of up to €600.000 per national HPC Competence Centre matched by the Participating States with a similar amount, and a duration of up to 21 months would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately.

The resource distribution in the proposed work plan should reflect the main focus of the NCC network, i. e. local support services for SMEs and industry, and be generally aligned with the common work package and organisational structure of the NCCs in the EUROCC 2 network.