First AI Factory arrives, largest EU investment in Bologna

Of the seven AI factories approved yesterday by the EU Commission, "this is the first in Europe in terms of size, computing capacity and investment (430 million euros). The supercomputing infrastructure that will be operational by 2026 at the Bologna Technopole will be the flagship of the strategic model that Europe has chosen for the digital and artificial intelligence challenge: a public network available to everyone, from start-ups and small entrepreneurs to public and private researchers'. This is how the Emilia-Romagna Region's Councillor for Economic Development, Vincenzo Colla, comments on the news from the European Commission, which has also selected Italy as one of the seven countries that will contribute to doubling the computing power of the Euro HPC network (the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking), with the first seven AI factories and an investment of 1.5 billion euros, including EU funds (Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programmes) and national and regional co-financing.

The start of the 'artificial intelligence factories' represents a milestone for Europe in the construction of an efficient ecosystem for the training of advanced AI models at the service of the business and academic worlds, a bet on a public network for collective use, which contrasts with the Silicon Valley paradigm in the hands of large private capital and, at the other extreme, the hegemony of the central government in China.

The new advanced supercomputer, optimised for AI and coming to Emilia Romagna's Data Valley, is at the heart of the IT4LIA AI Factory project (co-funded by Mur, which involves several research institutes) and will be managed by Cineca (the inter-university consortium set up in 1967 to pool the universities' computing capacity). The other six co-funded projects are in Spain ("BSC AIF" at the Supercomputing Centre in Barcelona), in Finland "LUMI AIF" at CSCn in Kajaani, in Luxembourg ("Meluxina-AI" at LuxProvide in Bissen, in Sweden ("MIMER" at the University of Linköping), in Germany ("HammerHAI" at the University of Stuttgart) and in Greece ("Pharos" at GRNET in Athens).

The AI Factory coming to Data Valley - where the country's largest concentration of supercomputing has taken shape over the past eight years, between the data centre of the European Weather Centre ECMWF and the 250 billion operations-per-second Leonardo supercomputer - definitively consolidates Bologna's role as not only a geographical but also a digital crossroads for the country. The new infrastructure 'brings to approximately one billion euros the total amount that our country has allocated in recent years for the acquisition and development of cutting-edge computing resources, investments that are unprecedented in our recent history. And it is also an acknowledgement of the work done so far by the ICSC National Centre, the creator of a competitive and attractive supercomputing ecosystem that will meet the needs of research, the production sector and the public administration,' emphasises Antonio Zoccoli, president of the INFN (National Institute of Nuclear Physics) and the ICSC Foundation (the National Research Centre in High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing, one of the five National Centres set up by the NRP dedicated to strategic sectors for the country's development).

He is echoed by Fabio Pammolli, president of AI4I (the Italian Institute for Artificial Intelligence for Industry, founded in the autumn by the government to accelerate applied and transformative research in the field of AI), the implementer of the AI Factory: 'The challenge is to rapidly systemise the various players in the supply chain, creating a virtuous and fast link between Italian manufacturing SMEs, start-ups and companies developing AI solutions, our R&D units and the new Supercomputing Infrastructure.