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In short, the current status of the HPC ecosystem in Bulgaria includes diverse modern hardware (including two supercomputers from the TOP500 list – Discoverer and HEMUS, as well as multiple HPC clusters), and extensive expertise in HPC and the adjacent fields. The competencies and expertise were acquired during a multitude of successful EU projects, as well as leadership and participation in high-profile national programmes and projects with industry/SMEs. Experience in negotiating and managing contracts with different sources of funding and for the use of both equipment and expertise has been gathered. In this paper, we discuss the new developments in the HPC Ecosystem, supported by the acquisition of the HEMUS supercomputer in 2023, as well as our design choices and optimization approaches.

Three years ago a new European initiative started: establishing a network of Centres of Competence in HPC in the European countries through the project EuroCC (2020-2022) in its second phase EuroCC2 (2023-2025). The goal is to accelerate the improvement of national and thus European capabilities in the area of HPC+ technologies, where HPC+ means High Performance Computing (HPC) and HPC application in HPDA and AI. In order to form an effective National Competence Centre in HPC+ technologies, we performed extensive competence mapping and now devise an extensive service portfolio, open to users from academia, public administration and industry. In this paper we present our analysis of the situation in Bulgaria as well as our approaches to make NCC and effective focus point for those that can benefit from use of HPC+ technology in their research or business.