In order for the Grand Duchy to create a technological paradise for businesses and local industries in Luxembourg, emphasis has been laid on the following priorities:
In the context of digital revolution, the government of Luxembourg has been attributed a major role in terms of taking advantage of new technological opportunities and making the country an ICT hub.
One of the most representative examples of digital innovation in Luxembourg is called MeluXina. MeluXina constitutes one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe with a calculating power of 10 petaFLOPs, meaning 10 million billion operations per second. This technological miracle is located in Luxembourg and is expected to be listed on the top 50 of global ranking, out of 500 supercomputers.
Generally speaking, supercomputers have a complex operational activity, dealing with multiple fields, such as modelling and simulation, analysis of big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and companies’ innovation.
Specifically, MeluXina is designed in order to deal with complex parts in sectors like research, health and economics, but, most importantly, it deals with the reinforcement of enterprises’ innovation and sustainability. As it is mentioned on the official website of the Grand Duchy’s government, MeluXina “will contribute to the implementation of a sustainable and reliable digital economy by making high-performance computing accessible to businesses of all sizes”.
Aligned with the goals and the vision of the government, a joint effort of different actors from Luxembourg has taken place in the country. The national innovation agency “Luxinnovation”, in cooperation with the University of Luxembourg and the national HPC organization “LuxProvide” are managing the Luxembourg National Competence Centre in High-Performance Computing (HPC), which is designed in order to assist businesses, researchers, and public administration to accelerate their performance and to maximize their efficiency, by reducing costs and time-consuming procedures through the use of MeluXina. Given that Luxembourg constitutes the base of the headquarters of several multinational companies from all over the world, the Luxembourg HPC Centre is mainly seen as a “one-stop shop” for enterprises in order to take advantage of professional support and services.
However, MeluXina is only the beginning. The Grand Duchy has already been involved in a European initiative, co-funded by the European Commission and 32 countries, which envisages the establishment of a European network, known as EuroHPC, with its headquarters based in Luxembourg. In this European initiative, MeluXina will be a part of a large network of supercomputers connected throughout the European continent. This kind of initiatives prove that there is always space for further development.