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1. The Joint Undertaking may launch a call for expressions of interest to upgrade the EuroHPC supercomputers that it owns or co-owns, to raise the performance level of the supercomputer close to exascale, to increase the AI capabilities of the supercomputer, or to increase the operational performance of the supercomputer in any other way, including by means of quantum accelerators.

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3. The hosting entity shall be selected by the Governing Board through a fair and transparent process based, inter alia, on the following criteria:

(a) justification of the upgrade;

(b) compatibility with the original EuroHPC supercomputer;

(c) increase in operational capacity performance of the EuroHPC supercomputer;

(d) provision of an appropriate supporting document proving the commitment of the Member State where the hosting entity is established or of the competent authorities of the Participating States of the hosting consortium to cover the share of the upgrading cost of the EuroHPC supercomputer that is not covered by the Union contribution as set out in Article 5 or any other Union contribution as set out in Article 6, either until its ownership is transferred by the Joint Undertaking to that hosting entity or until the supercomputer is sold or decommissioned if there is no transfer of ownership.

4. The Joint Undertaking shall acquire, jointly with the contracting authorities of the Participating State where the selected hosting entity is established or with the contracting authorities of the Participating States in the selected hosting consortium, the upgrade of the supercomputer and shall own it under the same conditions of ownership of the original EuroHPC supercomputer.

5. The percentage of the Union’s financial contribution for the acquisition costs of the upgrade shall be the same as the percentage of the Union’s financial contribution for the original EuroHPC supercomputer, depreciated over the expected remaining lifetime of the original supercomputer. The percentage of the Union’s financial contribution for the additional operational costs of the upgrade shall be the same as the percentage of the Union’s financial contribution for the original EuroHPC supercomputer. For the petascale supercomputers acquired during the time of application of Regulation (EU) 2018/1488 the Union financial contribution for the upgrade shall cover up to 35 % of the additional operating costs.

6. The share of the Union’s access time to the upgraded EuroHPC supercomputer shall remain unchanged over the lifetime of the machine. If the upgrade entails an increase of capacity, the additional access time shall be directly proportional to the Union contribution.