The CEA is the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives). It is a public body and a leader in research, development and innovation. The CEA mission statement has two main objectives: To become the leading technological research organization in Europe and to ensure that the nuclear deterrent remains effective in the future.
The CEA is active in four main areas: low-carbon energies, defence and security, information technologies and health technologies. In each of these fields, the CEA maintains a cross-disciplinary culture of engineers and researchers, building on the synergies between fundamental and technological research, uses unique facilities (supercomputers, reactors for research, large physics instruments, high power lasers …) and maintains strong links with the industrial and economic fabric.
The CEA is based in ten research centres in France, each specializing in specific fields. The CEA benefits from the strong regional identities of these laboratories and the partnerships forged with other research centres, local authorities and universities. In order to promote the transfer of knowledge, the CEA put special emphasis on education and outreach activities.
Recognized as an expert in its fields of competencies, the CEA is fully integrated in the European research area and is increasingly present at international level.
The CEA / DAM île de France centre
The DAM-Ile de France centre is established in two geographic sites: in Essonne (Bruyères-le-Châtel and Ollainville) and in Marne (Moronvilliers, close to Reims). It is one of the five centres of the Direction of Military Applications of CEA.
2000 engineers, researchers, technicians are working, in this centre, for the French nuclear deterrence (design and guarantee of nuclear weapons, fight against proliferation and terrorism). They also provide a unique know-how in domains such as the engineering of major infrastructures and earth science to the scientific and technical community. Last they fulfil for the French state an operational mission of alert in case of foreign nuclear test but also in case of earth quake and tsunamis (from July 2012 on).
The CEA expert in HPC
The CEA, and especially the CEA DAM-Île de France centre, is recognized as an expert in HPC. In this domain, the main challenges that need to be overcome in the next years are: the design of hardware and software architectures giving access to very high computing power; multi-scale and multi-physics modelling methods; management of very large quantity of data.
The complexity of these issues leaded the CEA to the identification of the following strategic priorities:
- The Definition and the commissioning of computer resources with an architecture optimized for the simulation needs.
- The development of associated simulation software.
- Major investments in terms of R&D.
In order to meet these challenges, the CEA builds on a lot of collaborations, through national or international projects, on the one hand with research organisations, on the other hand with industrial partners in the field of HPC.
