The results of first H2020 HPC calls have been known Spring of 2015: 19 technological RIA “FETHPC” projects, 8 Centres of Excellence for Computing Applications – in different areas – have been granted a total funding of almost 140 M€.

The FETHPC call had been mainly inspired by ETP4HPC 2013 Strategic Research Agenda recommendations (SRA). In parallel, in 2014-2015, ETP4HPC also prepared new recommendations for 2016-2017 H2020 calls, acknowledged by the European Commission. ETP4HPC is now in the process of updating its SRA in detail, this is planned for Fall of 2015 and meant to be a reference document for 2016-2017 calls – which should be made public before the end of 2015. Centres of Excellence, which are about to start, will also be involved in the HPC Public Private Partnership (cPPP) with the EC and ETP4HPC, before end of 2015 – this cPPP is the umbrella for the EU HPC global strategy.

EXDCI, a global European HPC coordination action funded by H2020 as well, has also been kicked-off beginning of September. ETP4HPC, as well as more than 20 other entities, are associated to PRACE for this ‘eXtreme Data and Computing Initiative’, a 30 month action. EXDCI will support the continuation of ETP4HPC SRA efforts as well as a full update of PRACE 2012 Scientific Case for HPC, and a global coordination of HPC roadmaps in Europe, actions for the support of HPC talent generation and SMEs, international cooperation and eventually monitoring and impact assessment of H2020 HPC programme – especially in socio-economic terms.

• entry in force, January of 2014, of the HPC Public Private Partnership (cPPP) signed in December 2013 by the ETP and the EC; kick-off and joint setup of the cPPP governance (April 2014 HPC Infoday in Paris, cf picture)
• start of the first actions with the call for projects related to HPC technologies (FETHPC) and Centres of Excellence (EINFRA) within the 2014-2015 Work Programme with a budget of 140 M€
• preparation of new HPC R&D recommendations for H2020 Work Programme 2016-2017; the related calls for projects are expected end of 2015

In the end of 2013, ETP4HPC had 46 members and it grew to 64 members by the end of 2014, a sustainable and dynamic growth, enrolling more industrials, SMEs and research organisations ( cf picture).

The objective is to build a dynamic ecosystem which will increase the value created by Europe in the HPC solutions and in the usage of HPC, through the active participation of the stakeholders. To achieve this objective, ETP4HPC operates work groups, attends events, develops relationships and communication actions.

Different ETP4HPC Work Groups were active during 2014:

• Intellectual Property and Rights: a report was sent to the EC Q1 of 2014
• Education and Training: a draft report on needs and gap analysis was sent to the EC Q1 of 2014
• Key Performance Indicators started reflection on KPIs to be further implemented for the cPPP (to assess scientific, technical or socio-economic impacts of H2020 HPC programme)
• SMEs
• Centres of Excellence: to clarify the CoE concept and possible links before consortia - independent from ETP4HPC -  would be created H2 of 2014 to answer the eINFRA 2015 related call

ETP4HPC actively participated to 2014 big HPC or ICT events (ISC, SC, TERATEC Forum in France, CAE conference in Italy, ICRI in Greece, PRACE Days in Spain) and to a number of topical workshops and events organized by the EC:

• HPC for climate modelling and simulation (February)
• HPC and Car Industry (April)
• Software tools for next generation computing (June)
• FET Open and FET HPC InfoDay and Consortium Building event (June)
• Digital Europe meeting (September)
• High Performance Computing (HPC) in Health Research" (October)
• FET Committee (October)
• All ETP meeting (November)

2014 was also the opportunity to develop and consolidate links with other HPC stakeholders (PRACE, EESI, SKA, BigDataValue and Big Data cPPP, ECSEL, US DOE, RIKEN…).

December 2013 – A productive 2013 year for ETP4HPC, with several important achievements and milestones

• Publication of the first Strategic Research Agenda [1] (SRA - printed version disseminated in April) and related dialogue with the European Commission regarding the preparation of the first Horizon 2020 calls for the  2014-2015 « Future and Emerging Technologies » Work Programme.

This Work Programme, published on December 11th, 2013, encompasses a “FET-Proactive - towards exascale high performance computing » call mostly and directly inspired by ETP4HPC SRA, with a funding of 90 M€  for HPC technologies R&D [2]

• Two General Assemblies – in February in Rome, in Paris in September – attended by most members

• Recruitment of more members: as of end 2013, ETP4HPC had 46 members (33 Full Members, 13 Associated  Members), out of which there are 18 SMEs.

• Preparation of a cPPP  (contractual Public Private Partnership) : submitted in July, revised in September   after assessment by the European Commission and independent experts

• Actual signature of the cPPP arrangement with EC Vice-President N. Kroes, December 17th in Brussels [3].

  

The cPPP is an agreement setting a framework to implement the EC policy in HPC first expressed in February 2012 commun ication  [4]  and confirmed during May 2013 Council of Competitiveness.

This agreement makes HPC visible and supported over the whole lifespan of H2020 – indicative global EC contribution of 700 M€ over 7 years, beyond the ca. 100 M€ in the aforementioned FETHPC  2014-2015 calls. The cPPP is open to future Centres of Excellence for Computing Applications (CoEs) as well as to PRACE to join in. The EC is fostering the creation of CoEs in the e-infrastucture calls of H2020 Excellent Science pillar.
The cPPP does not imply the creation of a specific new legal entity. It rather sets a dialogue structure between HPC ecosystem stakeholders, while H2020 existing  instruments are used to implement and fund actions -  like explained above. The cPPP partners mainly commit to a joint and constructive coordination towards the EC policy objectives and  to set up relevant performance indicators for proper monitoring and impact assessment of the whole programme.

References:
[1] http://www.etp4hpc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ETP4HPC_book_singlePage.pdf
[2] http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2014_2015/main/h2020-wp1415-fet_en.pdf
[3] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-1159_en.pdf
[4] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2012:0045:FIN:EN:PDF   

September 2013 - ETP4HPC now the reference technological platform for HPC in Europe

European Technology Platform for  High Performance Computing ETP4HPC published its first Strategic Research Agenda (SRA).

Following February 2012 European  Commission communication, May 30th, 2013 Council of Competitiveness  confirmed and further considered the strategic interest of HPC for Europe, and especially of its technologies. ETP4HPC is now recognized as the reference plateform in this domain and is now working on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) setup with the European  Commission. ETP4HPC SRA research topics and priorities have already been considered for the definition of forthcoming Horizon 2020 first work programmes, and the related calls for projects in its first period 2014-2015. To find out more on ETP4HPC

ETP4HPC, the European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing (HPC) has been founded mid 2012 by major European suppliers of High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies, Allinea, ARM, Bull, Caps Entreprise, Eurotech, IBM , Intel, ParTec, STMicroelectronics and Xyratex, associated with HPC research centres and organisations BSC, CEA, CINECA, Fraunhofer, Forschungszentrum Juelich and LRZ. New members have already jointed the association: European companies MAXELER, GNODAL and NUMASCALE, as well as EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) et INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) research organisations, while others memberships are to be confirmed soon. ETP4HPC is open forum and any organization with R&D on HPC in Europe can join.

An industry-led Forum, ETP4PHC has already produced a Vision Paper in March 2012, and is currently preparing a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for end of 2012, to propose R&D programmes to increase the value created in Europe from future HPC systems. Working Groups have been launched with experts from member or non-member organizations, spanning a diversity of topics:

• System and Component Architecture
• System Software
• Programming Environment
• HPC Usage Models
• Energy Efficiency
• Extreme Parallelism
• System Resiliency
• Compute, I/O & Storage Performance Balance
• Big Data – Supporting New Workloads
• New HPC Delivery (e.g. Cloud)

A first workshop gathered these Working Groups end of June in Paris. Another one is taking place early October in Barcelona, including a one-day dialogue with a panel of European industrial end-users, representing different domains and usages of HPC. This dialogue is meant to put the ETP4HPC SRA reflections in the perspective of the whole HPC value chain and its economic and societal outcomes through the applications of HPC technologies.

End of September an ETP4HPC delegation met Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, in Brussels. Beyond acknowledging ET4HPC initiative and confirming the Commission interest in HPC as an enabler of innovation and competitiveness for Europe, Ms Kroes expressed her high expectations: ETP4HPC is to be actively contributing to the definition of Horizon 2020 program that will define the future European research objectives.

To find out more : www.etp4hpc.eu

European industry and research centres join forces to create a European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing

Major European suppliers of High Performance Computing (HPC) technologies, Allinea, ARM, Bull, Caps Entreprise, Eurotech, ParTec, STMicroelectronics and Xyratex associated with HPC research centres BSC, CEA, CINECA, Fraunhofer, Forschungszentrum Juelich and LRZ have decided to combine forces to create a European Technology Platform (ETP), building on the previous work of PROSPECT and Teratec.

The objective of the ETP is to define Europe’s research priorities to develop European technology in all the segments of the HPC solution supply chain. It will strengthen European competitiveness in HPC, a key capability for future research and innovation. The effort will be beneficial to a wide range of social and economic challenges. HPC is an indispensable instrument to resolve problems of the highest complexity that require extremely large and very efficient computational and storage capabilities for activities such as modelling natural phenomena (weather, climate change or epidemics), optimizing energy resources, researching novel materials and shortening engineering development cycles, which would foster innovation across the region.

The ETP will be an industry led forum that will propose a Strategic Research Agenda taking advantage of European industry strengths to increase the value created in Europe from future HPC systems. Currently the design of supercomputer solutions face significant challenges such as management of the extreme parallelism experienced in HPC architectures or the reduction of the power consumption, addressing these presents opportunities for European players to improve their position in the worldwide market.

To achieve these objectives the current consortium will set up an organization that will be open to any businesses, groups or individuals who have R&D activities in any aspect of HPC and are located in Europe. The goal is to bring together all the research forces in Europe including R&D activities of SMEs, European corporations, international corporations and research centres to benefit from their competences and to foster these capabilities by proposing an ambitious research plan to the European Commission.

The consortium will act promptly to create the ETP and to propose a Vision Paper. The ETP will prepare the Strategic Research Agenda seeking acknowledgement from the European Commission to provide inputs towards the Horizon 2020 program that will define the future European research objectives.

This initiative is an important step to encourage and strengthen the position of the European HPC industry. The impressive set of competencies of the members gathered on this initiative show that Europe can be at the forefront of the HPC industry in coming years if an ambitious R&D program is
put in place. The ETP will provide the catalyst for such a movement and the impact will be a stronger European HPC industry that will create employment, added value, and a stimulus for students and academic researchers in the area. Through this improved capability and capacity, HPC users will gain the ability to achieve new results in science and technology and to design more innovative products and services.