PROSPECT, an open European association of leading suppliers and users of supercomputers from industry and academia, starts a European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing. Its aim is to help Europe realise the highly promising economic, scientific and societal benefits of High Performance Computing (HPC). The Technology Platform will define research priorities for European HPC in the form of a Strategic Research Agenda submitted to the Commission and will help ensure that public investment in HPC delivers the widest possible benefit to European business and society.

BARCELONA/JÜLICH/MUNICH, July 22 -- In three years of preparation, PROSPECT has completed a Technology Vision document on HPC anticipating the position of European HPC by the year 2020. Last month, on June 21st, the PROSPECT vision document was presented to the expert public including EU representatives at a panel discussion at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg.

The Chairman of the Executive board of PROSPECT and Associate Director at Barcelona Supercomputing Center Francesc Subirada says: “The European Technology Platform on HPC will substantially contribute to increasing European competitiveness in the development and ownership of novel and independent HPC technologies. PROSPECT acts according to democratic principles and remains open to any organization that might want to join us in supporting European industry, science and society.”

In a variety of fields of technology, European Technology Platforms (ETP) are defining Europe’s research priorities in which Europe needs to strengthen its competitive position. ETPs are industry-led initiatives providing advice to the European Commission in preparation of research programmes and objectives.

The ETP for HPC fosters technology development in all fields of ICT relevant for HPC and supercomputing. Supercomputers are the indispensable instruments to resolve problems of highest complexity that require intensive and efficient processing, such as modelling the short and long-term natural phenomena with impact on European society like weather, climate change and epidemics, the efficient use of energy resources, novel materials and chemicals and shortening innovation cycles.

Supercomputers dominate scientific and business applications like decoding genes, film animation, analysis of financial risks, crash tests, airplane design and meteorological simulations – to mention only a few examples.

HPC has enormous potential to stimulate innovation, productivity, competitiveness and sustainable jobs growth in leading sectors in Europe. In the next few years, HPC will be a transformative technology for business and society. The benefits of HPC will be delivered by large and small businesses in many sectors, and by researchers in many fields who will, for example, use it to design and test solutions with much greater predictability, speed and cost-effectiveness than previously possible. By broadening the use of HPC to more sectors, to a much wider range of users, and by dramatically lowering the barriers to access HPC, Europe can gain competitive advantage globally in a wide range of industries and scientific fields, and in tackling key challenges.

About PROSPECT

PROSPECT (Promotion of Supercomputing Partnerships for European Competitiveness and Technology, www.prospect-hpc.eu/) is an association of European industry and research organizations that aim at promoting science and research in the area of HPC. PROSPECT was founded in 2007 and it currently has 32 members from 7 countries. To date, twenty-two member organizations (HPC vendors, research centres and end-user organizations) from countries such as Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Russia confirm that “[…] the ETP on HPC will promote shared development of novel hardware or software solutions by the participants of a partnership. The aim is to ensure that Europe masters the know-how on HPC technologies and could have, if need be independent access to a strategic technology”.

These organizations are: Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Cray, Data Direct Networks, Dell, Deutscher Wetterdienst, EuroTech, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum Stuttgart (HLRS), HP, IBM, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Leibniz-Rechenzentrum (LRZ), Megware, Micron Semiconductors, Netherlands National Computing Foundation (NCF), Numascale, ParTec Cluster Competence Center, The University of Edinburgh, T-Platforms, T-Systems, und Universität Heidelberg.

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Source: PROSPECT e.V.