HPC is such an interesting arena at once swept up in national campaigns and yet pushed forward by broad international collaboration. The balance between the two is constantly shifting. With that in mind, both HPC User Forum meetings being held in Europe in the middle of October will take early stock of the U.S. National Strategic Computing Initiative as well as ongoing European regional HPC efforts.
The two meetings are being held just a few days apart – one hosted by GENCI (Paris, France) on October 12-13 and the other by Leibniz Rechenzentrum (Munich, Germany) October 15-16 – have scheduled presentations to review the nascent NCSI plans. These meetings will have the advantage of following the first public panel of NSCI agencies at the HPC User Forum being held next week in Broomfield, Colorado. Other topics are wide-ranging. Registration for both meetings is free.
“Europe is an important entrant in the global exascale race. Since 2012, the European Commission has been driving the implementation of the first Europe-wide HPC strategy, and it’s made impressive progress. France and Germany are major HPC players, both at the national and European levels, but each country has its own HPC history and priorities that the HPC User Forum meetings reflect,” said Steve Conway, IDC Research Vice President, HPC/HPDA and Steering Committee member, HPC User Forum.
“The Paris meeting will discuss the status of the European HPC strategy, GENCI’s leadership role in advancing HPC in France, and HPC’s major contributions to French industry, especially through Teratec. The Munich event will feature leaders of the Gauss Center for Supercomputing that includes the three national HPC centers, the Swiss national center, and others who are driving the future of HPC in the German-speaking world. Both meetings will include U.S. HPC experts discussing America’s new NSCI initiative, big data developments, and disruptive trends in science and industry.”
The agendas, while not identical, have a fair amount of overlap. HPC use in climate research and life sciences are on both dockets and IDC will present the results of its HPC ROI research, funded by DOE. IDC reports having more than 325 ROI examples that generated either financial ROI or innovation ROI with HPC. The financial ROI from HPC in revenues generated per dollar invested in HPC was an eye-popping $515 in the new study. The job creation ROI in the study was also strong. IDC will present the new data and some results. A sample session from each meeting is shown below.
Regional and National Strategies (Paris):
- The European HPC Strategy, Augusto Burgueno-Arjona, European Commission
- The French HPC Ecosystem and the European Vision, Catherine Rivière, GENCI
- America’s National Strategic Computing Initiative, Steve Conway/Bob Sorensen, IDC
Strategic HPC initiatives: GSC and NSCI (Munich):
- Update: Gauss Centre for Supercomputing, Thomas Lippert, GSC CEO
- Juelich Supercomputing Center, Thomas Lippert
- High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart, Michael Resch
- Extreme Scaling and Energy Efficiency at LRZ, Arndt Bode
- Summary of First Public Forum on America’s National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI)
- CSCS Update: Thomas Schulthess, Swiss National Supercomputing Center
The full agendas are available at https://www.hpcuserforum.com/events.html