A European HPC Ecosystem for AI: Challenges and Opportunities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping science, industry, and society at an unprecedented pace, and is especially impacting the high-performance computing (HPC) community, presenting a number of challenges, whilst at the same time a number of opportunities as well. This Birds of a Feather session will provide an interactive forum to explore how European HPC centres are adapting to AI and machine learning (ML) use cases, and how these developments are influencing research workflows and infrastructure strategies.

To initiate the discussion, this session will include a quickfire round of short presentations from a selection of European AI Factories (AIFs) and AI Factory Antennas (AIFAs), and how they are aiming to foster collaboration across national and institutional boundaries. Key use cases from these will be highlighted, including those with major societal impact such as weather and climate modelling, manufacturing, engineering, and the analysis of medical data. A key focus area of the AIFs and AIFAs will be engaging with SMEs across Europe, onboarding SMEs to the systems and enabling them to leverage AI, by addressing key historical barriers such as lack of access to HPC resources, and lack of expertise in using these. Insights from the user journeys of the early adopter SMEs will be presented, along with the requirements of their use cases.

The main part of the session will revolve around an open Q&A and panel discussion that will collectively examine the future direction of the European AI ecosystem; identifying priorities, opportunities, and challenges. Key topics include sustainability, talent development, and the need for strong community engagement to ensure that Europe remains competitive and inclusive in the global AI landscape. This BoF is designed as an open, collaborative discussion, and attendees are encouraged to share experiences, raise questions, and contribute ideas that will help shape a cohesive European ecosystem for AI. ISC in particular is the ideal place to hold this BoF, due to the historical presence of the leading European HPC centres, many of which are involved in AI Factories and Antennas, along with participants from industry and funding agencies.

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Organizers:

• Alex Upton
• Mark Parsons
• Mathis Bode
• Kerem Kayabay
• Rossen Apostolov