The EU and Ireland’s Department of FHERIS announce the AI Factory Antenna in Ireland (AIF IRL-Antenna)
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and Ireland’s Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (FHERIS) today announced the successful outcome of the Irish bid to establish an AI Factory Antenna in Ireland (AIF IRL-Antenna). The AIF IRL-Antenna has been awarded €10m (evenly co-funded by the EU and DFHERIS) to provide a range of AI-focused technical resources and services to the startup/SME, public sector and research ecosystem in Ireland. The bid was also endorsed by DETE (Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment), Enterprise Ireland and Research Ireland.
EuroHPC JU Selects AI Factory Antennas to Broaden the AI Factories Initiative
Deliver AI resources and support for startups, SMEs, public sector
The AIF IRL-Antenna will bring AI-optimised high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure (including AI Sandbox and Secure Data Environment), technical experts to support development and optimisation of AI solutions, and talent development through training programmes. This will accelerate Ireland's twin transition goals – digital and green transformations – across sectors in energy, agriculture, biodiversity, climate, life science, healthcare, smart cities, Space, deeptech and manufacturing.
The three primary objectives of the AIF IRL-Antenna are to
- Support the implementation of Government strategies relating to Advanced Computing, including HPC, AI, Data Spaces and Quantum Computing.
- Scale and accelerate AI innovation across the ecosystem by lowering the entry barrier for AI adoption and development.
- Serve the needs of enterprises (particularly, startups and SMEs) and public sector for AI infrastructure, support and skills.
National consortium led by ICHEC
The AIF IRL-Antenna will be implemented by a national consortium, led by ICHEC (the Irish Centre for High-End Computing, hosted at University of Galway), with CeADAR (Ireland’s national centre for applied AI) as core partner. The consortium includes a network of enterprise accelerators (PorterShed, Dogpatch Labs, RDI Hub, Republic of Works, Advanced Innovation in Manufacturing) and digital skills networks (Innovation Technology AtlanTec Gateway, Digital Technology Skills Ltd.) as associated partners.
Link with France and Luxembourg
The AIF IRL-Antenna will link with the AI Factory in France (AI2F) to bring access to one of Europe’s world-class exascale-class supercomputer (Alice Recoque) for AI development and strategic partnership to bridge the AI ecosystems between Ireland and France. The partnership would cover infrastructure and data sharing, joint talent development, data spaces and federated infrastructures, and strategy/policy co-development. Additionally, the IRL-Antenna will have a second link with the Luxembourg AI Factory focusing on domain-specific AI specialisation across climate, environment, energy, Space, smart mobility and digital health, and access to Meluxina-AI for secure, hyperconnected and scalable computing power.
The AIF IRL-Antenna is also complemented by and will leverage the next national HPC infrastructure (CASPIr), recently announced by the EuroHPC JU and DFHERIS.
Professor Jean-Christophe Desplat (Director, ICHEC) says:
IRL-Antenna will deliver a critical component of our national Advanced Computing infrastructure, bringing software platform and services for the accelerated adoption of AI within our SME and startup ecosystem as well as public sector bodies.
Note
Created in 2018, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a joint initiative between the EU, European countries and private partners to develop a World Class Supercomputing Ecosystem. Ireland is a founding member, represented by DFHERIS on its Governing Board.
It promotes the development of HPC and AI capacities and capabilities through the running and co-funding of competitive calls.
Since its establishment, it has co-funded HPC supercomputers, quantum computers, AI factories and AI factory antennas.
