The strategic research agenda (SRA)

SRA 3 is the third edition of the SRA and the second full edition - SRA 2 in 2013 being an incremental update on SRA 1 in 2013). The final version was published in the second half of December 2017.

In 2019, we are working on the fourth edition of the SRA, which will be published at the end of the year.

What is the SRA?

The ETP4HPC Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) is our key deliverable. It is a document that outlines a roadmap for the achievement of exascale capabilities by the European High-Performance Computing (HPC) ecosystem. The milestones set in the SRA are used to define the contents of the HPC Technology R&D Work Programmes managed by the European Commission. Any project submitted within the HPC part of the EC work programme should reflect the milestones identified in the current SRA.

The SRA tackles the development of European HPC technology across the following areas: HPC System Architecture and Components, System Software and Management, Programming Environment, Energy and Resiliency, Balance Compute, I/O and Storage Performance, Big Data and HPC usage Models, Mathematics and algorithms for extreme scale HPC systems, and Extreme-scale Demonstrators (EsDs) (the latter two were not present in SRA 1).

The areas are fed into a model, which we are using in order to develop the European HPC Technology roadmap. This model assumes a balanced development of four main areas (or 'dimensions') in order to deliver a balanced and efficient ecosystem that would serve the European economy and European citizens. This multi-dimensional model is depicted in the picture below and it is explained in detail here.

ETP4HPC maintains the SRA on a continuous basis. The first SRA was issued in 2013 and we published an update (SRA 2) in November 2015. Our latest SRA 3 was published in Nov 2017.

The SRA is the work of experts associated with ETP4HPC. We also welcome comments from other stakeholders and experts. In order to facilitate this process we have opened a Public Call for Comments.

The SRA reflects the needs of the European HPC Technology providers and other members of the European HPC ecosystem, i.e.: PRACE (academic users), industrial HPC end users, Independent Software Vendors. We have also used the conclusions made available by other initiatives such as HiPEAC, EESI and PlanetHPC. We have also talked to the Big Data community (represented by the Big Data Value Association).

The roadmap was developed through a series of internal and external workshops. A team of ETP4HPC experts supervised and managed the process, whilst the technical areas were developed by Working Groups led by members of ETP4HPC. All members of ETP4HPC can participate in the development of the SRA.

Example of SRA 2 (2015) Milestones: