At the heart of FCCI is the concept of Smart Specialization strongly supported by the EU: FCCI strengthens Finland as one of the leading countries in scientific computing. The highest-level computational Tier-0 and Tier-1 infrastructures (maintained by CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd) available in Finland are among the best in the world, but they will not succeed without strong Tier-2 capacity, which is an essential part of the computational ecosystem. FCCI is Finland's Tier-2 level computing infrastructure, which coordinates the scientific computing activities of Finnish universities. Notably, FCCI does not overlap with the functions of CSC, but has a distinct role.
The core mission of the FCCI project is to provide all partner universities with computational & data storage resources, local scientific computing experts, and competence training actions that support each university’s specific research and training activities, thus supporting the national profiling of the universities and their infrastructure strategies. FCCI integrates these capacities into a single entity that is coordinated and developed centrally and integrated with CSC’s Tier-1 and Tier-0 services. FCCI is based on the latest technologies and specifically supports data-intensive research, machine learning, AI, and high-performance computing.
The FCCI user groups cover all scientific fields as well as arts, and FCCI is a key research infrastructure for many cutting-edge research environments. In Finland, FCCI supports researchers using >40 other research infrastructures.
A central part of FCCI's activities is the training of top scientific computing professionals for use in all sectors of the society. Training actions of FCCI are organized by every partner, however the key partner for national FCCI training actions is Aalto University.
With FCCI, Finland's computing infrastructure is unique worldwide, acting as a competitive asset in recruiting the best researchers, raising Finland to the forefront of science worldwide, and profiling Finland as one of the world's leading science countries for scientific computing, digitalization and the green transition.