The national budget for 2021 contains items of particular interest for researchers using advanced technology, such as HPC.
In the budget, there is a special provision for increased base funding of Sigma2.
Under this provision, the annual average base funding for national e-infrastructure is doubled, from 25 MNOK to 50 MNOK, pending an updated agreement including a similar increase by the four partner universities.
This increase is meant to address the growing need of Norwegian researchers, while at the same time increasing the predictability of Sigma2’s long-term funding by reducing the dependency on competitive bi-annual calls.
Horizon Europe programme
It is also crucial for Norway to allocate funding in its national budget for participation in the EU's Horizon Europe program, the successor to the current Horizon 2020 program, as well as for the new Digital Europe Program (DEP). A significant portion of the funding for the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and EuroHPC will be derived from Horizon Europe and DEP. This will enable Norwegian researchers and institutions to actively engage in the EU's ambitious plans for supercomputing in Europe.