John Barr on the European Strategy for HPC and Exascale

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Over at The Exascale Report, John Barr writes that the European Commission has been funding research activities that expand the use of Petascale facilities by researchers across Europe and lay some of the groundwork for the move towards Exascale. However, the European Exascale strategy is evolving, with a much stronger focus on support for industry – both ISVs and the European HPC supply side industry – appearing in recent initiatives.

The Communication proposed that a world class HPC infrastructure should be provided for European academic and industrial users (with a focus on support for SMEs), and that Europe’s position as a supplier of HPC technologies should be strengthened. The governance for this activity should cover both industry (through an industry led technology platform) and science (through PRACE). It is proposed that the annual funding for European HPC R&D be increased from €630 million in 2009 to €1.2 billion to make this activity competitive at a global level. The additional €600 million would come from national budgets, the Commission and industrial users. Half of the new funding would be to fund the procurement of HPC systems and testbeds, with the remainder split evenly between training and software.

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