The EU and Ireland’s Department of FHERIS announce major milestone towards the next national supercomputer for Ireland (CASPIr)
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and Ireland’s Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (FHERIS) today announced the signing of the “Hosting Agreement” to secure the next national supercomputer for Ireland to empower users across a variety of sectors in academic research, public sector and the enterprise ecosystems.
The hosting agreement, signed between the EuroHPC JU and University of Galway – host of the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) – is a contract that defines the roles, rights and obligations of each party. The procurement process for this new supercomputer will be managed by the University of Galway in collaboration with EuroHPC JU and will begin in the immediate future.
The Way Is Open to Building a EuroHPC World-Class Supercomputer in Ireland
What is CASPIr
The new supercomputer CASPIr (Computation, Analysis, Simulation Platform for Ireland) will be a data-centric infrastructure with high-performance computing (HPC) resources to run data services and compute services for the national and EU ecosystems. CASPIr will be co-funded by the EuroHPC JU and by Ireland through national funds.
Once deployed, CASPIr will be a mid-range supercomputer capable of performing over 15 petaflops or 15 million billion operations every second. It will support cutting-edge AI and machine learning workloads, handling small-scale training and interference tasks as part of larger simulation and data analysis workflows.
National investment and support
These milestones come after the Budget announcement of an increase in the Research and Development tax credit from 30% to 35%, demonstrating commitment to the research sector and the promotion of collaboration between industry and academia. Budget 2026 also saw some €810 million of capital funding for the Further and Higher and Education sector, an almost 20% increase under the National Development Plan and a step change in the State’s support for research and innovation.
CASPIr and AI Factory Antenna in Ireland (AIF IRL-Antenna)
The agreement for CASPIr is also complemented by and will strengthen the announcement to establish an AI Factory Antenna in Ireland (AIF IRL-Antenna), also recently announced by the EuroHPC JU and DFHERIS.
Professor Jean-Christophe Desplat (Director, ICHEC) says:
The signature of this Agreement with EuroHPC represents an important milestone for Ireland. It paves the way to the procurement of CASPIr, one of a new generation of supercomputers designed to execute sophisticated computer models known as digital twins, with broad domains of applications ranging from health and life sciences, to the search for new materials, mitigating the impact of climate change and improving mobility within our cities"
Background
The EuroHPC JU is a legal and funding entity that brings together the European Union and participating countries to coordinate efforts and pool resources with the objective of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.
To equip Europe with a cutting-edge supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured 11 supercomputers, distributed across Europe. Three of these EuroHPC supercomputers are now ranked among the world’s top 10 most powerful supercomputers: JUPITER in Germany, Europe’s first exascale system (4th place), along with LUMI in Finland (9th place), Leonardo in Italy (10th place).
European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from EuroHPC supercomputers via the EuroHPC Access Calls no matter where in Europe they are located, to advance science and support the development of a wide range of applications with industrial, scientific and societal relevance for Europe.
Currently, the EuroHPC JU is also overseeing the implementation of 19 AI factories across Europe that offer free, customised support to SMEs and startups. Six new AI Factories were announced last week, while thirteen AI Factory Antennas have been announced today, to complement the existing network. This step will strengthen European national AI ecosystems and expand access to AI-optimised supercomputing resources across Europe.
