European project MINERVA
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Context
MINERVA (European Support Centre for Scalable AI Research and Deployment) is a 36-month European project (2025-2027) funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking under the DIGITAL-EUROHPC-JU-2023-AISC-03 call (n° 101182737).
It aims to facilitate the integration of large-scale artificial intelligence by leveraging European supercomputers. It offers the AI community — researchers, industry and start-ups — a single entry point to a network of expertise and HPC resources tailored to AI needs.
MINERVA acts as a central hub for large-scale AI on HPC, with actions such as:
- porting AI applications and workflows to HPC environments
- optimisation and scaling
- pre-training and specialisation of open foundational models
- setting up best practices for responsible AI (compliance, bias, data management)
By relying on a consortium of HPC centres and AI actors from across Europe, MINERVA pools skills, shares resources and develops new services that go beyond the capabilities of a single centre.
Main Activities
MINERVA deploys its actions around several complementary areas, ranging from technical support to training, the production of best practices and the animation of the AI/HPC community.
Services for AI users
The MINERVA service portfolio is structured into 5 thematic levels:
- L1 – Porting & adaptation of AI workflows to HPC: resource access, adaptation to HPC environments, pre-processing, storage, tools (Jupyter, Kubernetes...)
- L2 – Optimisation & scaling: scalability, adaptation to accelerators, optimisation, compact variants
- L3 – Pre-training of foundational models: integration of varied data, optimisation, compression
- L4 – Specialisation & fine-tuning: PEFT/LoRA, RAG, alignment, efficient evaluation and inference
- L5 – Ethical & responsible AI: dataset evaluation, fair workflows, compliance (AI Act)
These services can be delivered via 4 types of support:
- T1 – Assistance: quick remote help to solve a specific problem
- T2 – Consulting: planned sessions for strategic advice, architecture, compliance, planning
- T3 – Workshop: intensive technical co-engineering sessions for optimisation, profiling, scalability
- T4 – Embedded Support: longer technical collaboration on ambitious AI projects
Training
MINERVA organises training sessions and practical workshops at different levels, from first use of AI on HPC to advanced deployment and optimisation techniques. The calendar and resources are available on the Training page.
Benchmarking
Benchmarking activities cover AI models, software libraries, infrastructures and hardware, to guide optimisations and compare performance at the European scale.
Best Practices Guides
The project produces and disseminates practical guides (deployment, optimisation, responsible AI) to help the AI community effectively exploit HPC resources.
Community and Ecosystem
MINERVA animates a Community Hub and a User Advisory Board to gather user needs, share best practices and stimulate transnational collaborations.
Role of IDRIS
IDRIS (CNRS) coordinates the support activities (Work Package 2 – MINERVA Services), which includes:
- defining and evolving the service portfolio
- coordinating responses to user requests
- contributing to the implementation of the different types of support (T1 to T4, depending on the context)
In addition, IDRIS contributes to the other areas:
- training and workshops
- benchmarking campaigns
- development of best practices guides
- animation and development of the AI/HPC community
Partners
MINERVA brings together several computing centres and key AI actors in Europe, working together to provide large-scale support to the AI community: CINECA (coordination), CNRS/IDRIS, CEA, CINES, BSC, FZJ/JSC, UNIMORE, University of Tübingen, iGenius, Silo AI.
Learn More
- Discover the project on the official MINERVA website
- Follow MINERVA news on LinkedIn
- Contribute to the definition of services by responding to the online questionnaire