The Fortissimo evolution and SME participation in FFplus through the open calls
The series of Fortissimo projects started more than 10 years ago (the project Fortissimo was launched in 2013) and while the core vision has remained, there has been quite an evolution in the type of activities being carried out. The core vision is that HPC is very often exploited only by large industrial organisations and the same business value that they generate by the use of HPC could also be realised by SMEs.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the European Commission was looking at how to support European industry. They came up with a program called Factories of the Future and part of that programme was to support manufacturing SMEs through several actions, including the take-up of HPC use. This gave rise to the Fortissimo project (2013-2016) which was about looking at the needs of manufacturing SMEs and how they could exploit HPC at that time. There was also the idea for giving them access to remote services, HPC in the cloud. What we've seen since then is a very strong development of the themes. We started off with typical HPC applications based on modelling and simulation, very often with the “classical” applications of fluid dynamics, structural mechanics or molecular modelling (for example, targeting aerodynamic optimisation in the aeronautical or automotive industries, structural performance optimisation of manufactured products or specialised products in chemical engineering). That changed over the years: with the Fortissimo 2 project (2015-2018) we started seeing some of the data analytics applications. The subsequent FF4EuroHPC project (2020-2023), which, as the name suggests, was funded in the HPC programme of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), saw a shift in priorities to cover not only modelling and simulation or data analytics but the use of AI methods and technologies. Which brings us now to the FFplus project, where the “plus” in the name intentionally implies an extension of the Fortissimo approach, which is explained below.
The Fortissimo approach, as realised in FFplus from 2024 onwards, is about performing business-oriented experiments and innovation studies that address a business challenge of an SME; helping them innovate, increase their productivity, and boost their commercial success. The business experiments seen in the first three Fortissimo projects were about SMEs using HPC to solve their concrete business challenges, with a priority on SMEs new to such use. In FFplus, the approach has been extended to include innovation studies that look at the development of technologies, specifically to develop software solutions based on generative AI.
In all cases, the objective is to demonstrate the potential to gain a business advantage through HPC, proving that HPC makes sense not just for research but also for doing business. The technical challenges for the SMEs new to using HPC are often the lack of know-how or personnel resources. The business experiments typically then bring together small consortia with the SME at the centre supported by providers of software technology, application domain technology or HPC know how that help them address their business problem. Actually, we can observe a strong move from classical HPC applications to HPC that includes the use of AI technologies: about 75% of the business experiments currently funded in FFplus leverage AI and Machine Learning. The FFplus innovation studies, on the other hand, target SMEs with HPC expertise and the appropriate know-how and competences to use and develop generative AI tools. What is missing for them is access to large-scale systems. FFplus provides a funded sub-project enabling them to exploit the use of the large-scale European systems to scale up their tools to get more benefit and higher productivity from their generative AI tools.
There are two important methodologies used within the Fortissimo projects: (i) the use of open calls for the selection of SME-driven mini-consortia (funded as sub-projects using cascading funding, more on which below); (ii) using the concrete and measurable business benefits from the activities of those mini-consortia to demonstrate to the broader European SME ecosystem, that employing HPC leads to business innovation. The latter is addressed by the Fortissimo success stories – the key outputs of the Fortissimo projects!
The FFplus project has the largest funding budget so far within the series of Fortissimo projects, with a total of € 24M. That budget will be assigned to the two types of sub-projects – business experiments and innovation studies – via 3 open calls, each call involving two separate sub-calls, one for each sub-project type. The first open call was executed in 2024, with the first tranche of sub-projects now operational. The cascading funding functions as follows: the source of the funding for sub-projects is the overall funding provided to the FFplus project through its grant agreement with the EuroHPC JU. The open calls are used to select the best possible proposals to receive project funding, the successful consortia (which might be consortia involving just a single organisation, namely the SME) are offered a funding contract with the FFplus Coordinator, the University Stuttgart, whereby they become sub-projects linked to (and funded by) FFplus. Once the calls or sub-calls, are announced, detailed information concerning objectives, expectations and both funding eligibility criteria and evaluation criteria are provided by the call documentation (definitive proposer’s guide and supporting documents) available via the FFplus website. While these vary between the two types of sub-calls (& targeted sub-projects), there is a common theme: the emphasis and priority is on impact and innovation in a business context.
The high level of SME interest in participation in FFplus was demonstrated by the response to the first open call, with around 190 proposals received in total.
Authors: Guy Lonsdale, Guntram Berti (scapos)