Over 200 academic and industrial users of HPC came together in Barcelona for PRACEdays14. This was the first time that PRACE had brought both groups together at a single conference.
Over 200 academic and industrial users of HPC came together in Barcelona for PRACEdays14 (PRACE Scientific and Industrial Conference). This was the first time that PRACE had brought both groups together at a single conference.
In her opening speech, María Luisa Poncela, from the Economy and Competitiviness Ministry, welcomed participants and emphasised: “The Spanish system of R&D and lnnovation is very much interested in the development of HPC and its applications. In fact, we have a very competitive ICT sector, as indicates its successful participation in FP7. Therefore, Spain has invested in the past and will continue doing so in the future in HPC.”
The aim of the conference was to highlight the need for collaboration both between countries and between the private and public sectors. Mateo Valero, Director of Barcelona Supercomputing Center, who also welcomed participants to PRACEdays14, said: “If we all work together, we will make progress. In order to make progress, we need to create an ecosystem and the right tools.”
A strategic tool for the European Union is, effectively, what PRACE provides: machines in the network collectively offer European users computing power of more than 18 Petaflops/s. For Augusto Burgueño, HPC (High-Performance Computing) combines three elements: to undertake research in the field of computer science, to provide access to the best supercomputing tools and services for both researchers and businesses, and to achieve excellence in HPC applications. “Many countries have ambitions plans to implement the next generation of supercomputers. However, creating an Exaflop machine is not the goal; what concerns us more is the process and the knowledge gained along the way, which can be used to inform the next generation of computers and their applications.”
For her part, Catherine Rivière, Chair of the PRACE Council, believes that the key to competing with other great supercomputing powers (the United States, Japan and China), is in technology transfer. “To provide a genuinely useful service, we need to listen to industrial users and understand their needs.”