ETP4HPC webinar: European HPC centres for Industry

11:00 am - noon CEST

Exploitation of HPC for the benefit of industry is a topic that is extremely relevant today considering the pace of technological advancements and the availability of very powerful computing resources for these industrial users. The topic gains even more interest in this era of AI-based extreme data analysis, which industry can greatly benefit from, for which HPC can be used as a valuable and powerful instrument. 

However, there are challenges especially in terms of accessibility, ease of use and on-demand provision of resources for industrial HPC users. Besides, the HPC ecosystem in Europe and the setup of EuroHPC to facilitate the running of future Exascale class HPC machines open up many questions on how the industry can best benefit from them. 

This webinar discusses this hot topic of industrial HPC usage through the lens of big HPC centres in Europe that are keen to share their rich experiences on the opportunities and challenges incumbent to the industrial usage and provision of HPC.  

The speakers will provide some insights from an HPC centre perspective, paving the pathway for a rich Q&A session where some of the challenges and opportunities both for the industry as well as for HPC centres will be discussed. There is also bound to be valuable feedback which will percolate its way back to the EuroHPC JU!

Three speakers representing three major European HPC centres have accepted our invitation to share their experience of HPC for industrial users:

• Alison Kennedy, STFC Hartree Centre,
• Bastian Koller, HPC Centre Stuttgart,
• Jean-Philippe Nominé and Christine Ménaché, CEA for CCRT.

Moderator: Sai Narasimhamurthy, SEAGATE

This webinar is organised with the support of the HPC-GIG project.

Speakers

Alison Kennedy is the Director of the Hartree Centre, a department of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) National Laboratories in the UK. Based at Daresbury in the North West of England, the Hartree Centre’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of technologies such as HPC, HPDA, AI and quantum computing by UK industry, leading to economic and productivity gains for the UK. Backed by £172m of government money to launch the Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation, the centre has recently extended its collaboration with IBM Research in this 5 year programme. Prior to joining the Hartree Centre in 2016, Alison held dual roles as an Executive Director of EPCC, the national HPC Centre based at the University of Edinburgh and as Managing Director of the PRACE aisbl (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe). She has undergraduate degrees in History and in Mathematics and Technology and a post-graduate degree in Business Administration. Alison Kennedy began her working life as a real time systems programmer in industry, progressing to roles in software product management and in sales.  She has now worked in HPC for almost 30 years, managing large organisations, projects and collaborations in HPC, Data and AI.

Dr Bastian Koller is the Managing Director of the High Performance Computing Centre Stuttgart. Since he started at the centre in 2004, he has always been involved in industrial activities, such as one of the first cloud projects, the work on Grids for Enterprises (BREIN), BEinGRID or the Fortissimo activities. At the same time, he has been instrumental in the development of HLRS services to best interact with industry, with a particular focus on small and medium enterprises.

He is currently coordinating the EXCELLERAT Centre of Excellence for Engineering, the EuroCC and CASTIEL activities to establish national centres of excellence across Europe, and FF4EuroHPC, a successor to the Fortissimo activities.

Dr Jean-Philippe NOMINÉ has been with CEA  HPC division since 1992, now in charge of HPC strategic collaborations (EU and international). He is a member of ETP4HPC Steering Board, ETP4HPC Vice-chair for Research, and a member of EuroHPC Research and Innovation Advisory Group (RIAG) on behalf of ETP4HPC . He contributed to various activities of ETP4HPC since 2012, incuding impact assessment of H2020 HPC programmes between 2014 and 2018, reflections on Education and Training, and continuous membership development. J.P. Nominé graduated from Ecole Polytechnique (engineer degree) and holds a PhD from Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (Paris) in Robotics.