Things
The ICSC National Center – “National Center for HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing” – code CN00000013 – Cascading call – Spoke 2 – “Fundamental Research & Space Economy” – INFN foresees the involvement of Italian public and private actors to build a synergy between the scientific communities and the industrial world, to the benefit of both the research system and the production system. To this end, the ICSC program promotes the implementation of cascade calls for an amount of 32 million euros to support Fundamental Research, Industrial Research, Experimental Development and Feasibility Studies projects through the provision of appropriate funding. The ICSC cascade calls are issued by the Spokes with reference to one or more thematic areas, described in Attachment 2 - Thematic areas for the presentation of projects. Attachment 5 – Objectives of Spoke 2 – summarizes the general objectives of Spoke. The objective of the cascade calls is to reach public and private entities, external to the ICSC Partnership, strongly interested in introducing significant innovations in relation to CN products, processes or services.
Who is it aimed at?
The entities eligible to submit project proposals are: As regards businesses: - Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), not members or affiliates of the CN which compete in single mode, having the dimensional parameters set out in Annex I of the REG (EC) n. 800/2008 of the Commission of 6 August 2008 (General block exemption regulation) in OJEU L 214 of 9.8.2008, and subsequent amendments; - Large Enterprises (GI), not members or affiliates of the CN or the Spoke issuer;- Consortia or groupings (ATI/ATS or other form that can be used in compliance with Italian legislation), established or in the process of being established among the above beneficiaries. As regards research organisations: - Italian State Universities, not members or affiliates of the CN or the issuing Spoke; Italian non-state universities legally recognized and accredited by MUR, not adhering to or affiliated with the CN or the issuing Spoke; Research Organizations (Od R) pursuant to regulation (EU) 651/2014, art. 2 "Definitions" point 83, not members or affiliates of the CN or the issuing Spoke, other than those indicated in the previous points, provided that the activities of the organization are almost exclusively of a non-economic nature, where the economic use remains purely accessory, i.e. corresponds to an activity that is necessary and directly linked to the functioning of the research organization or intrinsically linked to its main non-economic use and which is limited in scope. In accordance with the European regulations referred to in Communication 2014/C 198/01 of the EU Commission, this is the case where the economic activity absorbs exactly the same factors of production (such as materials, equipment, labor and fixed capital) as the non-economic activities and the capacity allocated each year to such economic activities does not exceed 20% of the relevant overall annual capacity of the entity. - Consortia or groupings (ATI/ATS or other configuration usable in compliance with Italian legislation), established or in the process of being established among the above beneficiaries .
What does it predict
The project proposals must be consistent in terms of repercussions and impacts of the results with the research and innovation themes indicated by the Spoke (see Annex 2 - Thematic areas for the presentation of the projects). The proposer must explain, in the project proposal attached to the application, the elements of coherence and relevance requested above. The Spoke, through the institution responsible for issuing the tender, reserves the right to make changes to the scope of intervention on the basis of the provisions of the Hub for a possible second window of the tender in light of the needs of achieving the results and objectives of the Plan. The eligible thematic areas, as reported in Attachment 2, are different for public and private proponents, and are identified with the acronyms PUB1-8 and IND1-6. For private beneficiaries the following topics are foreseen:- IND1 Data Management Po Cs/pilots with Spoke 2 solutions in industrial environments (datalake, distributed computing, …)- IND2 Solutions, implementation and deployment of a computing Po C based on the ARM architecture - IND3 Porting and optimization (on GPU, on FPGA, on CPU) of algorithms of interest of Astro Particle experiments- IND4 Realization of tools and pilots for the Space Economy domain, using the infrastructure of the ICSC (portals, market exchange, algorithms, services, …)- IND5 Heterogeneous industrial use cases on the Spoke 2 platforms (GPU + FPGA + ARM)- IND6 Profiling, code engineering and code quality on Spoke 2 code repositories The following topics are foreseen for public beneficiaries:- PUB1 Development of data acquisition and trigger strategies in the context high background, rare event experiment, using acceleration on hybrid CPU/FPGA architectures, in the context of the activities of the Spoke2 in ICSC-PUB2 Development of a multipurpose/multi experiment high level cloud infrastructure for small /medium astroparticle experiments, on the infrastructure of ICSC and for the benefit of Spoke 2 use cases- PUB3 Development of a GPU library for massively parallelized simulations of QCD and QCD+QED on the lattice in the context of the activities of the Spoke2 in ICSC - PUB4 Development and performance optimization of typical simulation codes in HEP and Astro, for the use cases of Spoke 2- PUB5 Advanced algorithms for GW experiments (Virgo and ET) in the context of the activities of the Spoke2 in ICSC- PUB6 Studying the quantum Boltzmann equation neutrino flavor conversion in a dense environment in the context of the activities of the Spoke2 in ICSC-PUB7 Development of algorithms for boosted topologies at LHC/FCC, in the context of the activities of the Spoke2 in ICSC-PUB8 Accelerated analysis of Astrophysical data in the Photon Counting Big Data era, in the context of the activities of the Spoke2 in ICSC The project may have a maximum duration not exceeding the duration of the ICSC project with a deadline of 08/31/2025, without prejudice to any extensions. The duration is indicated in the provision for admission to financing and can be extended only once for a maximum period of 6 months, upon request and approval of the Spoke as long as the activities are completed and reported within the duration of the Program.
