Ref. Ares(2019)5332022 - 21/08/2019
Commissioner Carlos Moedas
Davos- World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2018
Davos-Klosters, Switzerland
24 - 26 January 2018
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1. STEERING BRIEF
1.1 Scene setter
You have received an invitation on behalf of
,
of Hewlett
Packard Enterprise, to meet during Davos.
Some possible points for discussion include:
• High Performance Computing- proposed by HPE considering that HPE is a
global leader in HPC.
1.2 Line to take
• Highlight the progress of the EU in terms of High Performance Computing
1.3 Objective
• Mention the most recent developments in terms of HPC, notably the European
High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking – EuroHPC- which was
announced by the European Commission on 11 January 2018
1.4 Speaking points
• The European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking – EuroHPC-
was announced on 11 January 2018.The activities of the Joint Undertaking will
consist of:
o Acquisition and operation of two world-class pre-exascale
supercomputing machines and at least two mid-range supercomputing
machines (capable of around 1016 calculations per second), and
providing and managing access to these supercomputers to a wide range
of public and private users starting from 2020.
o Research and innovation programme on HPC: to support the
development of European supercomputing technology including the first
generation of European low-power microprocessor technology, and the
co-design of European exascale machines, and to foster applications,
skills development and a wider use of High-Performance Computing.
• The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking will operate in 2019-2026
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2. BACKGROUND
2.1 High Performance Computing
• High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of super computers and parallel
processing techniques for solving complex computational problems.
• In the digital era, it is a strategic resource for Europe's future.
• Considering the necessity to deal with these large amounts of data:
i)
Industry and SMEs are increasingly relying on the power of
supercomputers to work on innovative solutions, reduce cost and
decrease time to market for products and services;
ii)
Modern scientific discovery requires very high computing power and
capability: for example, to accelerate genome sequencing by two orders
of magnitude and enable scientists to crack cancer diseases.
• The realisation of the European High-performance computing (shortly,
EuroHPC) strategy will be based on key pillars addressing:
i)
an ambitious High-performance computing (HPC) research and
innovation agenda for the development of hardware and software
components, systems and applications: developing the next generation of
key HPC technologies and systems towards exascale and post exascale;
ii)
infrastructure development and acquisition of world class
supercomputing and data infrastructures and their interconnection
(procurement in 2020-2021 of two pre-exascale HPC machines, in 2022-
2023 of two full exascale HPC machines and by 2026-2028 of two post-
exascale machines);
iii)
support to applications and skills development;
iv)
federation of national and European High-performance computing (HPC)
resources through an HPC and Big Data service infrastructure facility;
v)
support to High-performance computing (HPC) Centres of Excellence
(CoEs) for developing, preparing and optimising HPC codes and
applications for future exascale and post-exascale systems in co-design
• The EU investment until the end 2020 is close to EUR 1 billion for world-class
European supercomputers while another EUR 4 billion are foreseen under the
next MFF. EU level financing will support collaboration in R&D and will ensure
cross border access to foremost High-performance computing (HPC) and data
infrastructure.
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