Aligning HPC Strategies: PRACE Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC in Europe in Light of the ETP4HPC SRA and Other European HPC Initiatives

High Performance Computing (HPC) is a cornerstone of Europe’s digital, scientific, and industrial competitiveness. The Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC in Europe has provided strong, evidence-based justification for continued and increased investment in HPC, highlighting scientific breakthroughs, industrial innovation, and socio-economic impact enabled by HPC infrastructures and technologies. It was instrumental for creating the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), the European HPC infrastructure and EuroHPC JU as successor for providing HPC resources to the European user community. HPC is also a critical enabling technology for artificial intelligence (AI), in particular for large-scale Deep Learning and foundational models.

Several strategy papers for HPC and AI in Europe are published on a regular basis. PRACE is updating the Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC every 5 years. ETP4HPC, the European Technology Platform for HPC is issuing the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) for HPC approximately every two years addressing the European HPC HW, SW and application technology development. Both reflect in particular the state of the European Advanced Computing ecosystem, which includes in-production HPC and AI infrastructures and emerging Quantum Computing (QC) resources. The EuroHPC JU publishes yearly updates of its Multi-Annual Strategic Plan (MASP) which describes the state-of-the art in HPC, AI and QC HW, SW, applications and use cases, discusses R&D priorities for the next 3-4 years and recommends actions to be included in the EuroHPC JU work programmes. Last but certainly not least, specific projects like SPECTRUM and research communities have authored position papers and research agendas which bring forward requirements and propose strategies for HPC and AI in Europe.

These strategy papers, case studies and research agendas provide valuable input for policy makers to design the future funding programmes and to justify the investments in HPC, AI and QC. They all aim to support sound policy decisions for investments and projects in order to strengthen Europe to keep pace with the global race in HPC, AI, and QC. The accelerating convergence of HPC, AI, data infrastructures and emerging QC resources — together with the growing integration of large-scale European Research Infrastructures (such as CERN, SKAO and similar facilities) — makes systematic cross-analysis of these documents and the strategy proposals/recommendations they contain both timely and necessary.

In this BoF we will have a closer look at the individual recommendations contained in the latest versions and will compare the key findings and messages of the Scientific and Innovation Case for HPC in Europe with the recommendations of the ETP4HPC SRA and the EuroHPC JU MASP. We will identify and discuss areas of strong alignment between demonstrated HPC impact and strategic research priorities. More important however, we will highlight gaps, mismatches, or underrepresented topics between the strategy documents, and discuss these with the audience. By doing this the proposed BoF will help to create a synopsis, include feedback from end users, operators of HPC/AI/QC resources, providers of HW and SW technology in the European HPC ecosystem, and foster a productive dialog between these and policymakers and strategic planners.

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Organizers:

• Florian Berberich
• Hans-Christian Hoppe
• Philippe Segers