The National Center for High Performance and Distributed Computing (NCHDC) is the framework for the easy and cost-effective use of computing resources and services for research and innovation by individual researchers and researchers groups in Bulgaria. The NCHDC provides Bulgarian researchers with clearly defined, comprehensive, interoperable and sustainable infrastructure services provided by leading organizations in the field of e – Infrastructure to implement the users’ specific needs. This set of resources is constantly evolving to adapt to the changing needs of consumers and new ones technological capabilities.

The functions of the NCHDC can be summarized as follows:

  • Coordinated access to computing infrastructure and software with a central role for research and innovation (including the use of computing systems of the Center from the other scientific infrastructures included in the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures).
  • Providing sustainable and interoperable computing services of the newest kind, promoting a flexible and open approach, which permits the user communities to choose the services most suitable to their requirements.
  • Implementation of innovative activities aimed at the continuous development of the computing infrastructure to meet rapidly changing needs of the user communities, and the opportunity to take advantage of appropriate new technologies when they are mature enough.

The main objective of the NCHDC is to provide stable and reliable services on the sustainable way, in the long run, with maximum flexibility, exceptional cooperativity and understanding of users from different disciplinary areas, which put their specific problems and need support for the use of e-infrastructure. This is an extremely difficult task requiring experienced, knowledgeable, and motivated e-Infrastructure specialists to match the infrastructure and the development of modern hardware and software. The specific additional targets set for the period 2019-2021 are:

  1. Migration of grid computing to cloud computing
  2. Providing support for containerization
  3. Acceleration calculations: Providing users with access to computing using the latest accelerators according to theirs degree of maturity.

 

The NCHDC is a part of the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures and is funded by the Ministry of Education and Science udder Grant № ДО1-221/03.12.2018 г.