Pilot-UKAIFA and HammerHAI: UK and Germany collaborate to strengthen AI in Europe

^{Pilot and HammerHAI teams at HLRS, Stuttgart, Germany.}

The European AI landscape is undergoing significant advancement with the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) AI initiative, a coordinated effort to foster AI adoption in organisations from the public and private sectors in Europe. This initiative is only possible by combining a robust infrastructure with reliable AI expertise. That is why 19 world-class computing centres across Europe were selected to become AI Factories and, complementarily, 13 other centres were selected to act as AI Factory Antennas. 

Each AI Factory focuses on a specific service sector, such as defence & security, energy, manufacturing, agriculture, health, sustainability or culture and language. Each AI Factory Antenna connects to a specific AI Factory, working collaboratively on amplifying the reach of that Factory. 

UK AI Factory Antenna

The UK participates in this initiative as an AI Factory Antenna, being granted €10m (£8.6m) in funding from EuroHPC JU to support AI uptake across UK-based companies and the public sector through the provision of training, infrastructure and consultancy-like projects. 

The UK AI Factory Antenna (Pilot-UKAIFA) is hosted at EPCC, which plays a central role in National and European digital infrastructure initiatives. EPCC’s undertakings include hosting the UK’s National Research Supercomputing Service (ARCHER2) and the Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF) private research cloud facility that provides compute, data and customer services optimised for data analytics and science.

Pilot-UKAIFA is linked to the German AI Factory Antenna, HammerHAI, hosted at the High-Performance Computing Centre (HLRS) at the University of Stuttgart. Both centres have had successful collaborations in the past and are excited to grow these connections by collaborating again through the European Commission’s AI initiative. 

HLRS and EPCC collaborative meeting

To ensure the fluency and continuity of the collaboration, periodic meetings are conducted with members of both centres. The last one occurred in July at HLRS, in Stuttgart, Germany. The first day of the meeting started with introductions and a tour across HLRS facilities. The EPCC team had the opportunity to visit the German infrastructure, as well as interact with cutting-edge technologies being developed at the centre, most notably the powerful virtual reality tool for data visualisation and interactions located at the CAVE, which also allows users to remotely experience the same visuals as if they were in the room. The morning activities were concluded with a technical meeting involving both centres, where the HammerHAI team presented their cluster hardware and the planned improvements.

The afternoon session started with an introduction from the EPCC team and an overview of Pilot-UKAIFA. A HammerHAI internal review of activities was then conducted by our colleagues from Stuttgart, where advancements, issues and risks were mapped. The rest of the day was dedicated to a breakout session, where each work package (WP) member from the HammerHAI team met to discuss the main activities to be conducted, check the ongoing work, exchange information among WPs and identify areas for collaborating with Pilot-UKAIFA.

The second day of the meeting was dedicated to exploring the outcomes of the breakout sessions from the previous day. Every WP lead presented what had been discussed and the areas where EPCC would fit with collaborations. Pilot-UKAIFA was in charge of summarising the collaborative areas identified and presenting the actions to be taken towards this objective.

The meeting was beneficial to align strategy, identify hurdles and how to overcome them, as well as to strengthen connections with our colleagues. HammerHAI and EPCC agreed on new communication channels, how to act on the identified areas for collaboration and how to ensure work continuity.

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More information about AI Factories and AI Factory Antennas can be found at https://www.eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/ai-factories_en