On Monday this week, we had a pleasant online discussion with our colleagues from the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (IICT), a partner in the National Competence Center in Bulgaria. We have collaborated on various ICT-related projects over the last two decades. Nowadays, we have joined forces to promote and share knowledge on high-performance computing (HPC), high-performance data analysis (HPDA), and artificial intelligence (AI) in the framework of the EuroCC project.

During the meeting, we presented the major new developments within the national HPC infrastructures of both countries. The HPC center at IICT was recently upgraded with a new HPC system with the performance of more than 3 PFlops. The system for data storage and processing with a capacity of 6.72 PB was also discussed. The significant upgrade of the PARADOX system at IPB is scheduled for November. The technical specifications of these systems were discussed in depth and will be provided to the larger research communities in the countries in the near future. We discussed the advantages and interesting features of these systems and agreed to jointly organize an event where we will showcase these systems and the best ways to utilize them.

The Bulgarian team, with their longer tenure in EuroCC, shared their practical experiences integrating SME applications into their HPC resources, as well as policy-oriented aspects of such collaborations. We strongly believe that good regional practices can influence and improve the interactions with the national SMEs. The Bulgarian team shared some insights obtained from their collaboration with NCC UK, while the Serbian team presented the major outcomes of recent discussion with NCC North Macedonia and NCC Montenegro in Ohrid.