Piz Daint Supercomputer at CSCS
“PRACE offers via its Hosting Members access to computing and data management resources and services for large-scale applications at the highest performance level. The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre is one of them. Its supercomputer Piz Daint has recently become the third most powerful in the world.”
Switzerland became the eleventh signatory of the European declaration on high-performance computing. Switzerland’s broad experience in HPC will further strengthen Europe’s efforts to build the next generation of computing and data infrastructures. Indeed “Piz Daint”, a Swiss supercomputer, recently became the world’s third most powerful supercomputer.
We are very pleased that Switzerland – one of our long-time partners in high-performance computing – is joining the European effort to develop supercomputers in Europe,” said Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society. “This will enhance Europe’s leadership in science and innovation, help grow the economy and build our industrial competitiveness.
Switzerland will now participate in the common efforts to build the next generation of computing and data infrastructures in Europe. The aim of the EuroHPC initiative is to develop a world-class HPC ecosystem based on European technology and on energy-efficient computing and capable of at least 1018 calculations per second (so-called exascale computers). The objective is to have EU exascale supercomputers in the global top three by 2022.
Thanks to hundreds of thousands of processors, working in parallel to analyse billions of data in real time, supercomputers are the fastest and most powerful computers available. They are capable of solving complex computational problems and bringing concrete outcomes in various fields including personalised medicine, safer transport systems, better weather forecasting, wind plant modelling, smart cities or increased online fraud detection.
A European world-class HPC infrastructure will support a wide range of users: scientific communities, large industry and SMEs, as well as the public sector. Ultimately EuroHPC initiative will boost scientific leadership, industry competitiveness and EU’s innovation capacity to meet societal and scientific challenges.
(Click to download PDF) This infographic describes what High Performance Computing (HPC) is, what the HPC applications are, and what the European Commission does within its HPC strategy.
