Preparatory Phase for the Norwegian Participation in the ESFRI infrastructure SLICES

The SLICES infrastructure, which is on the ESFRI Roadmap 2021, will be a flexible platform designed to support large-scale, experimental research in information technology. In particular, it will be focused on networking protocols, radio technologies, services, data collection, parallel and distributed computing, and cloud- and edge-based computing architectures and services. Simula Research Laboratory is one of the 25 founding SLICES partners, spanning 15 EU/EEA countries, and a beneficiary in SLICES-PP, which is the Horizon Europe project partially funding the Preparatory Phase of the infrastructure development. Simula is also the host of the Norwegian infrastructure for experimental research in high performance computing (eX3). Currently, a proposal (eX-C3) for extending eX3 to span the complete compute continuum from the data centre to the extreme edge, also implicitly creating the Norwegian node in SLICES, is under evaluation by the Reseach Council of Norway. This project, SLICES-PP Norway, will co-fund the activities that Simula undertakes during the Preparatory Phase (until end of 2025) in order to be an active part in the international discussion and aligning Norwegian interests with the preparation of the SLICES infrastructure. Moreover, it will allow a strengthened collaboration in the eX-C3 consortium in preparation of a funding decision and recruitment of even more parties interested in the SLICES/eX-C3 concepts. The consortium behind the eX-C3 proposal is led by Simula Research Laboratory and includes Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering (SimulaMet), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), University of Bergen (UiB), Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet), University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), Sigma2, and Telenor Svalbard.