European HPC Effort
In contrast with other regions in the world, Europe is a collection of independent states. The coordination of large ‘continental’ initiatives is thus more complex and requires the consensus and contribution of multiple governments. This applies also to European HPC initiatives...
The European HPC landscape has considerably changed since ETP4HPC was created in 2012! The year 2019 saw the implementation of the EuroHPC JU.
The European High-Perfomance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a Joint Undertaking of the EC and 32 European countries that pools European resources to fund world-class integrated European HPC and data infrastructure and support a highly competitive and innovative HPC and Big Data ecosystem. Its budget for 2019-20 is 1.1 billion Euro.
Handbook of European HPC projects
An overview of all on-going European HPC projects - mostly Research projects, but also Support actions. This publication covers projects from many EC calls - not just HPC/EuroHPC calls - with up-to-date description, results, contact...
The Hanbook is now a website that is constantly updated!
ETP4HPC is a private member of the EuroHPC JU (together with the BDVA and QuiC associations) and chairs the Research and Innovation Advisory Group of the EuroHPC JU that advises on the HPC work programme.
The activities of EuroHPC to date include:
- Selection of consortia then preparation of the procurement of 3 pre-exascale machines and 5 mid-range machines (details on the dedicated EuroHPC page);
- Funding Research and Innovation projects on exascale technologies and systems (including the European low-power processor), applications, training and education.
A bit of history
Here is a short summary of the development of European HPC. There is a list of documents and links at the end of this page which can be used as references (also several links are included in the text).
The development of European HPC is based on an EC strategy paper from 2012 - Communication "High Performance Computing (HPC): Europe's place in a global race". This document stipulates the operation of the three pillars described below. The European HPC strategy also provisioned the establishment of a European HPC Technology Platform, which is now ETP4HPC (our association).
According to this strategy, the European HPC ecosystem is based on three pillars:
- HPC Research Infrastructure (PRACE - Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe)
PRACE is the European shared HPC research infrastructure funded by selected Member States and supported by the European Commission. It is a network of supercomputers at various tiers of computing power, which is available for scientific research projects based on a peer review process assessing the scientific value of the proposals (industry is able to use PRACE machine for research on the same conditions). - HPC Technology (represented by ETP4HPC)
ETP4HPC, the European HPC Technology platform, is an industry-led association and represents the European HPC technology value chain. ETP4HPC’s objective is to build a globally competitive HPC technology provision industry in European. Its main deliverable is the European HPC Strategic Research Agenda (SRA), which defines the priorities for research and development in HPC technology (and applications). The European funding organisations use the SRA to define research project contents. This pillar includes the HPC Technology projects tackling basic research in the area of HPC technology, Co-design projects (DEEP-EST and EuroExa), whose objective is to deliver a novel HPC system architecture in a co-design effort together with selected application domains. - HPC Application Expertise (developed through the Centres of Excellence in Computing Applications (CoEs)
European Application Expertise is consolidated into the CoE projects whose task is to develop, maintain and enhance HPC applications in various domains such as material sciences, weather and climate, biomedicine as well as tackle other related issues such as performance and training.
Another important element of the European HPC ecosystem is the European Processor Initiative (EPI) gathers 23 partners from 10 European countries, with the aim to bring to the market a low power microprocessor. It gathers experts from the High Performance Computing (HPC) research community, the major supercomputing centres, and the computing and silicon industry as well as the potential scientific and industrial users. Through a co-design approach, it will design and develop the first European HPC Systems on Chip and accelerators. Both elements will be implemented and validated in a prototype system that will become the basis for a full Exascale machine based on European technology
References
EU site on European HPC Strategy
PRACE - Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe
SHAPE - SME HPC Adoption Programme in Europe
SRA - ETP4HPC Strategic Research Agenda
BDVA - the European Big Data Value Association
EPI - the European Processor Initiative
