Key Milestones

2005

• Creation of ICHEC with seed funding from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and capital funding contributions from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) through the PRTLI4-funded CosmoGrid project. ICHEC opens offices in Galway (6 staff) and Dublin (2 staff).
• Procurement of the first national Supercomputer completed with equipment from IBM (Walton) and Bull (Hamilton). 
• First appearance of an Irish system in the Top 500 (Walton, 3.14TFlops at position #204).
• Start of first national HPC Service in Ireland.
• ICHEC runs its first HPC courses (Intro to HPC and Intro to the Message Passing Interface, MPI) at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork.
• Appointment of Dr Dennis Jennings as ICHEC's first independent Chair of the Board.

2006

• New Governing Board chaired by Dr. Dennis Jennings.
• Professor Luke Drury (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) appointed as interim Director.
• Establishment of ICHEC's Science Council, and award of first Class A projects (first Class A PI is Professor Jiri Vala, NUI Maynooth with a project entitled "Topological phases in quantum lattice systems").

2007

• Establishment of ICHEC's Users Council.
• Signing of Met Éireann Co-operation agreement.  
• ICHEC secures capital and recurrent funding from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) through its PRTLI4 programme. The e-INIS initiative, co-ordinated by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), seeks to establish the foundations for a national e-Infrastructure in Ireland.
• Launch of EC-Earth Consortium in Dublin, with ICHEC as key founding partner.
• Installation of the first (and only to date) HPC Capability system in Ireland based on IBM BlueGene /L (Lanczos) and BlueGene /P (Schrödinger). 

2008

• Ireland joins the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) through signature of the PRACE MoU. 
• ICHEC moves its Dublin office from its temporary location in Merrion Sq (Kindly hosted by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) to new offices in Trinity Technology & Enterprise Campus.
• Installation of Stokes, Ireland's new national supercomputer. This system had a performance of 25.1TFlops was ranked #118 in the Top500 at the time of its installation.

2009 

• Professor Jim Slevin appointed ICHEC Director.
• ICHEC secures 3 year funding (2009-2011) from Science Foundation Ireland for the National Academic HPC Service.
• ICHEC moves its Dublin base to larger offices "the hub", its current location, on the same site.
• Installation of ICHEC's 3D visualisation lab. 
• Start of ICHEC's Industry engagement programme, and first commercial contract with Tullow Oil.
• ICHEC staff grows to 20 personnel.

2010

• ICHEC awarded status of NVIDIA CUDA Research Centre, one of only 7 worldwide at the time. David Luebke (NVIDIA Distinguished Inventor Director of Research NVIDIA Corp.) explained that ICHEC had been selected as a CUDA Research Center based on the vision, quality, and impact of the research leveraging CUDA technology carried out in the Centre. 
• Ireland becomes a founding member of PRACE AISBL.
• Stokes undergo technology refresh, increasing its processing power to 36.6 TFlops and gain position #332 in the Top 500.
• First participation as exhibitor to the International Supercomputing Conference, ISC'10 in Hamburg.

2011

• ICHEC provides a demonstration of its capability to Minister Sean Sherlock TD (Minister of State with responsiblity for Research & Innovation) at the European Science Foundation book launch "European success stories in industrial mathematics".
• PRACE AISBL formally launches 

2012

• JC Desplat appointed ICHEC Director.
• ICHEC wins first HPCwire Readers' Award (with the largest winning margin that year) for the "Most Innovative Use of HPC in the Financial Service Sector". 
• Start of collaboration with DataDirect Networks (DDN).
• Under Horizon2020 programme, ICHEC secured €716,000 for PRACE 3IP project. 

2013

• First participation of ICHEC as exhibitors to the BT Young Scientist Exhibition  
• ICHEC procures Ireland's new national Supercomputer, Fionn.
• ICHEC launch Fionn with Minister Sean Sherlock. The name Fionn was proposed by Oscar O’Donoghue and Lauren Boyle following a competition open to all schools in Ireland.

• ICHEC re-launches its industry engagement programme focused on bridging the skill gap in Irish SMEs and Startups.
• The Department of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation and the Department of Education & Skills (with the Higher Education Authority) co-fund ICHEC's new funding cycle for 2013-2015. Ministerial launch at the Royal Irish Academy.

2014

• ICHEC is awarded the status of INTEL Parallel Computing Centre (IPCC) by Intel, only the 6th in the world (and 3rd in Europe). 

• Started testing of DataDirect Network (DDN)'s Infinite Memory Engine (IME) platform.
• ICHEC joins the European Technology Platform for High-Performance Computing (ETP4HPC).
• ICHEC launches the "Irish Engineering Sandbox" in partnership with CADFEM Ireland.

2015

• ICHEC joins LERO programme under SFI Research Centre Call for 2013 securing €970,250 in partnership with Tullow Oil PLC and DataDirect Networks.
• Workshop on "Technical computing and the economy:competitiveness and, job creation". 
• First participation as exhibitor to the Supercomputing Conference, SC'15, in Austin TX. 
• ICHEC holds its first workshop at SuperComputing'15  as co-organisers
• EPA launches new report on Climate Change for Ireland and Climate Adaptation, published by ICHEC's Dr Paul Nolan.
• Creation of the CSO - ICHEC partnership and Irish Sandbox under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.
• ICHEC secures participation in its first EI Innovation Partnership with Becton Dickinson & Company through its collaboration with Professor Dermot Kenny of RCSI.
• ICHEC becomes a proud member of Xilinx alliance programme.
• Under Horizon 2020 programme, ICHEC secures €1,078,860 from SESAME Net, ESCAPE and PRACE 4IP projects. 

2016

• ICHEC partners with Irish SME Skytek to develop the ESA Validation DataCentre (EVDC) in Ireland.
• ICHEC wins the IBEC-ISIN Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year for its work with Becton Dickinson & Company and RCSI.

• Celebration of ICHEC's 10th Anniversary with a workshop on "Roberto Viola on HPC and Competitiveness in Ireland and Europe". European Commission Director General of DG-CONNECT, Dr Roberto Viola, provide the keynote addressed.
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• ICHEC secures its 2nd EI innovation partnership with Mediolanum Financial Limited, the 1st partnership of its kind with the banking and financial sector in Ireland.
• Under Horizon 2020 programme, ICHEC successfully secure €610,900 for READEX, E-CAM, and EiSWACE projects.
• ICHEC's headcount reaches 30.
• ICHEC Director receives top French Honour, one of France’s highest honours, the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Knight of the Order of Academic).

• ICHEC received confirmation of funding for Ireland's next national academic supercomputer. Funded was awarded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) as part of its Research Infrastructure 2015 call (category A).

2017

• ICHEC awarded PRACE Training Centre status.
• Creation of ICHEC's Oil & Gas activity.
• Procurement for Ireland's next national academic supercomputer now underway, with opening of the new service scheduled for Q1-2018.
• Under Horizon 2020 programme, ICHEC successfully secure €730,860 for PRACE 5IP and HPC3 Europa projects.
• Five year's supporting BT Young Scientist. 

2018

• ICHEC appointed Ireland's representative for EuroHPC. 
• ICHEC collaborates on first Masters in Artificial Intelligence a programme, with University of Limerick following a launch by the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys (TD) at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
• Seminar with Microsoft on Deep Learning. 
• ICHEC announces new High-Performance Computer. The new system, which is being provided by Intel is comprised of a cluster of 336 high performance servers with 13,440 CPU (Central Processing Unit) cores and 64 terabytes of memory for general purpose computations.

2019

• Winner of the 55th BTYSTE conducts research on "Optimizing The Simulation of General Quantum Circuits" using  High-Performance Computing. 
• ICHEC supercomputer user Dr. Cristina Trujillo is awarded funding via a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Starting Investigator Research Grant (SIRG) award, for her project entitled "Theoretical Development of New Class of Phase Transfers Catalysts: Applications in the Pharmaceutical Industry".
• ICHEC outlines recent developments in Programming Quantum Platforms at the 2nd All Ireland Conference on Quantum Technologies. 
• AI for Recruitment. ICHEC works with Opening.io, Microsoft Ireland and Nvidia on a proof of concept project aimed at increasing software performance by porting CPU based software to GPUs.
• ICHEC launches first Copernicus Hackathon. 
• ICHEC researchers lead Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on Irish hydro-climate.
• Annual Seminar 2019. 

2020

• ICHEC attends the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition for 7th Year.   
• ICHEC investigated the possible link between Climate and Covid-19. 
• ICHEC receives received the GPU-accelerated Quantum Learning Machine Enhanced (Atos QLM E) from Atos.   
• ICHEC Completes High-Resolution Dataset for Ireland. 

2021

• Dr Michael Nolan appointed as new chair of ICHEC Science Council.
• ICHEC welcomes international students for PRACE Summer of HPC.   
• ICHEC launches its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. 

2022

• ICHEC joins All-Island Climate and Biodiversity Research Network.   
• ICHEC and Dublin Fire Brigade Explore the Potential for Big Data and Predictive Analytics Within the Fire Service Context.   
• Dr Venkatesh Kannan appointed as an Academic Associate at the Tyndall National Institute. 
• MetEireann and ICHEC improve the simulation of the North Atlantic Climate System and its impact on Ireland.

2023

• Ireland one of five sites selected by the EU to host new world-class supercomputer. 
• Introducing the Interim National HPC Service. 

2024

• Launch of Ireland's Climate Change Assessment.