On 15 October 2013 the Council of PRACE organized a networking reception at the Palais des Academies in Brussels under the motto “HPC @ Horizon2020”. The event also highlighted the publication of the special report “Supercomputers for all” supported by Science|Business. High-level personalities from European politics, national HPC players, science and industry contributed to the presentations and panel discussion.

 

The programme included an opening speech by Carl-Christian Buhr, Member of the Cabinet of Vice-President Neelie Kroes; presentations by Catherine Rivière, PRACE Council Chair and by Kenneth Ruud, PRACE Scientific Steering Committee Chair; as well as a round table discussion between Bernhard Fabianek (EC, DG RTD, Research Programme Officer), Konstantinos Glinos (EC, DG CNECT, Head of Unit for e-Infrastructure), Sylvie Joussaume (PRACE Scientific Steering Committee Vice-Chair), Catherine Rivière, Kenneth Ruud, Didier Schmitt (Chief Scientific Adviser Team / BEPA) moderated by Francis Wray from EPCC.


The support within the EU for an integrated HPC ecosystem capable of competing with China, Japan and the USA was made clear in the opening speech by Carl-Christian Buhr, who stated that “we all know the value of PRACE and its services and systems. Now it’s time to convince everyone else.”

Catherine Rivière spoke of “the democratisation of HPC” which is crucial if Europe is to stay at the forefront of HPC research and innovation. “PRACE actively builds the ecosystem needed to develop the next generation of supercomputers and computational experts that European science and industry needs.”
 

Kenneth Ruud chimed in, underlining that “computing represents a “third way of science”, complementing the traditional scientific methods of theory development and experiment and is becoming mandatory not only because of legal and practical hindrances to real-life experiments, but also to realise the full potential of investments in large infrastructures.”

Konstantinos Glinos and Bernhard Fabianek were unanimous in their acknowledgment of PRACE’s successes: “PRACE has done an excellent job in bringing together Europe’s high-performance computing capabilities and making the best European machines available to the best projects,” Glinos said.

 
The event organisation was supported by PRACE’s Belgian Member, represented by Cenaero, an applied research centre providing high fidelity numerical simulation methods and tools to companies involved in a technology innovation process. HPC & Infrastructure Manager Serge Bogaerts expressed his satisfaction with the event: “I think PRACE was very successful in rallying support for this event and for the future of PRACE: a future in which Cenearo will definitely be present.”

 

About PRACE

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international non-profit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure provides a persistent world-class high performance computing service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry in Europe. The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 4 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). The Implementation Phase of PRACE receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements RI-261557, RI-283493 and RI-312763. For more information, see www.prace-ri.eu

Please visit the PRACE website: http://www.prace-ri.eu

Original source: isgtw