COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT Implementation of the Action Plan for the European High-Performance Computing strategy Accompanying the document COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS European Cloud Initiative - Building a competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe
Date: 2016-04-19
Institutions: Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission
Subjects: EU action, EU industrial policy, EU investment, computer equipment, impact of information technology, information technology, information technology applications, innovation, software

EUROPEAN 
COMMISSION 

Brussels, 19.4.2016  
SWD(2016) 106 final 

COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT 

Implementation of the Action Plan for the European High-Performance Computing 
strategy 

Accompanying the document 

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL 
COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS 

European Cloud Initiative - Building a competitive data and knowledge economy in 
Europe 

{COM(2016) 178 final} 
{SWD(2016) 107 final} 

EN 

   EN 

 
 
 
 
  
 
Table of Contents 

1. 

2. 

3. 

Executive Summary ................................................................................................. 3 

Introduction.............................................................................................................. 6 
Acronyms ....................................................................................................................... 6 

The rationale for High Performance Computing ..................................................... 7 
Context ........................................................................................................................... 7 
High Performance Computing and the Digital Single Market....................................... 8 
Industrial competitiveness and the digital economy ...................................................... 9 
Scientific leadership ..................................................................................................... 12 
Societal challenges ....................................................................................................... 13 
HPC as a strategic technology: the global race towards exascale computing.............. 15 
Worldwide efforts in the HPC race .............................................................................. 17 

4. 

The European HPC ecosystem............................................................................... 20 
Base-line data for the HPC market in Europe: HPC spending..................................... 22 
Other elements in the HPC ecosystem ......................................................................... 26 

5. 

Status of the main objectives towards European Leadership in HPC.................... 29 
Communication on HPC: Challenges and objectives for European Leadership.......... 29 
Overall assessment ....................................................................................................... 30 
Providing a world-class European HPC infrastructure, including a workforce well 
trained in HPC.............................................................................................................. 33 
Ensure independent access to HPC technologies, systems and services for the EU.... 37 
Establish a pan-European HPC governance scheme.................................................... 40 
Ensure the EU's position as a global actor ................................................................... 41 

6. 

7. 

EC support to HPC in FP7 and Horizon 2020 ....................................................... 43 

Progress in the implementation of the European HPC strategy Action Plan......... 46 
Progress of the Action Plan.......................................................................................... 46 
Governance at EU level...................................................................................... 46 
1. 
Financial envelope for HPC ............................................................................... 48 
2. 
The implementation of funding mechanisms and pooling of resources............. 50 
3. 
Development of the European HPC eco-system ................................................ 51 
4. 
5. 
Industrial exploitation of HPC ........................................................................... 54 
Ensuring a level-playing field ............................................................................ 58 
6. 
Annex: Web References............................................................................................... 60 

 
 
 
 
 
1.   Executive Summary 

High  Performance  Computing  (HPC)  is at the  core of major  advances  and  innovation in 
the digital age. In the massively connected digital economy, the exponential growth of data, 
networking  and  computing  will  continue  to  drive  societal  changes,  scientific  advances  and 
productivity  gains.  The  nature  of  computing  is  changing  with  an  increasing  number  of 
data-intensive critical applications, and the intertwining of HPC with a growing number of 
industrial  applications  and  scientific  domains  makes  HPC  the  engine  to  power  the  new 
global digital economy, improving the scientific and industrial innovation capability and the 
competitiveness  of  industries  and  SMEs,  allowing  better  services  for  the  citizens  and  better 
decision  making.  HPC  is  one  of  the  key  contributors  to  the  Digital  Single  Market  (DSM) 
strategy next to Cloud services, Big Data and Internet of things (IoT). 

Europe  is  leader  in  the  use  of  HPC-powered  applications:  the  users  of  HPC  systems  and 
applications  in  Europe  include  the  most  profitable  and  vibrant  industrial  sectors  such  as 
manufacturing,  oil&gas,  or  pharmaceutical.  HPC  has  excellent  returns-on-investment  (ROI) 
in  Europe:  for  projects  with  financial  returns,  each  euro  invested  in  HPC  on  average 
returned €867 in increased revenue/income and €69 in profits.

HPC  and  Big  Data  enable  traditional  computational-intensive  sectors  to  be  more 
productive and move up into higher value products and services like smart manufacturing 
(e.g. simulation allows fast prototyping, with huge savings in the development of faster and 
safer cars and planes). These technologies also pave the way for new science, business and 
applications that we are far from imagining now. New applications and services are emerging 
based on the convergence of HPC, Big Data and Cloud –for example connected autonomous 
vehicles-,  and  novel  access  and  deliver  methods  (e.g.  the  "cloudification"  of  data  and  HPC 
resources)  will  allow  the  "democratisation"  of  HPC,  putting  this  wealth  of  data  and 
computing within the reach of business, SMEs and researchers.  

Mastering  HPC  technologies  has  become  indispensable  for  supporting  policy  making, 
maintaining national sovereignty and economic competitiveness. The development of the 
next HPC generation (i.e. the exascale computing) has become a national strategic priority for 
the most powerful nations, including U.S.A., China, Japan, Russia, and India.  However, no 
single Member State has the means to compete effectively in HPC at a global scale.  

Regarding the implementation of the Action Plan for the European HPC Strategy outlined in 
the Commission's Communication "High-Performance Computing: Europe's place in a global 
race",  and  the  overall  objective  of  European  leadership  in  HPC  by  2020,  there  has  been 
impressive progress in crucial areas, especially organising  the European  HPC community 
to  pursue  HPC  leadership  on  a  coordinated  basis,  expanding  the  scientific  and  industrial 
access to supercomputers (e.g. PRACE), and launching initiatives to strengthen the European 
HPC supply chain (i.e. the contractual Public-Private Partnership on HPC).  

Europe's  standing  as  a  provider  of  high-end  supercomputing  resources  advanced  in  both 
absolute and relative (worldwide) terms during the period 2010-2015, narrowing the former 
gap with U.S.A., Chinese and Japanese supercomputers. On average the net funding increase 
in HPC over 2010-2014 was extremely good for pursuing HPC leadership.  

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However,  the  EU  is  losing  its  position  in  the  top  supercomputing  league.  There  is  no 
European-wide  strategy  to  coordinate  the  national  investments  in  the  segment  of  strategic 
HPC systems. The EU today has only one supercomputer in the top 10 and three in the top 20, 
dropping from 4 and 7 systems respectively in 2012. Significant additional investments will 
be  needed  for  Europe  to  stay  in  the  HPC  race:  current  estimates  of  public  and  private 
investments for Europe to achieve leadership by 2020 are in the order of additional €3.263 
billion  in  5  years  (2016  to  2020)  or  €5.271  billion  in  7  years   (2016  to  2022)  in  order  to 
match  the  developments  of  Europe's  main  competitors  for  HPC  leadership.  Member  States 
and  the  EC  will  need  to  find  a  way  to  pool  financial  resources  and  coordinate  their 
investments. 

The  governance  of  HPC  has  considerably  evolved  in  the  last  few  years,  creating  a  real 
awareness of the importance of HPC for Europe and of the need to efficiently coordinate, pool 
and use available HPC resources at EU-level.  The most significant HPC actors in Europe in 
the field of Research and Innovation (mainly PRACE and ETP4HPC) are joining forces with 
other players to coordinate the strategy of the European HPC ecosystem. Further coordination 
is  also  necessary  between  the  different  national  HPC  policies  and  the  European  strategy.  A 
longer-term step in this strategy is to integrate HPC as a key component in the innovation 
environment of the European Science Cloud. 

The  development  of  the  HPC  ecosystem  requires  the  joint  effort  of  the  supply  and  demand 
sides. The EU is positioned to manage and coordinate a strong base of both indigenous and 
foreign  technology  to  assemble  exascale  HPC  capability  that  could,  in  some  critical 
application  sectors,  achieve  world-class,  if  not  global  leadership,  status;  for  example  in 
areas such as transport, aerospace, climate and weather, or the bio-economy. The next steps in 
the European HPC strategy are the large-scale platform integration of the technology building 
blocks with a co-design approach (choosing and developing technologies fitting the real needs 
of important European HPC users and applications). This needs to be complemented with the 
coordinated acquisition at EU level of world-class systems in order to transition the European 
leading supercomputers to the new computing generation, and with the further integration of 
the European HPC infrastructure.  

The new opportunities offered by the convergence of HPC, Big Data and Cloud have to 
be  exploited  for  wide  spreading  and  easing  HPC  use.  For  example,  platforms  for  on-
demand  HPC-empowered  Cloud  services  can  facilitate  access  to  the  new  generation  of  Big 
Data  tools  and  services  such  as  high  performance  data  analytics  to  SME’s,  start  up’s  and 
company departments, or researchers in the European Science Cloud.  

Regarding  industrial  access  to  HPC,  considerable  progress  took  place  in  the  last  few  years. 
Several Member States continued or set up new HPC competence centres that facilitate access 
of  industry  and  specifically  SMEs  to  HPC  services,  with  supercomputing  centres  giving 
support and transfer expertise to them. However, greater outreach is needed to make HPC 
resources and software available to industry, especially SMEs. Stronger support is needed 
for  disseminating  to  a  much  broader  industrial  base  and  easing  the  access  to  innovative 
European HPC applications and codes that are currently in limited use.  

A  critical  component  of  the  strategy  is  to  develop  a  much  larger  workforce  that  is  well 
educated and trained in HPC. There is still a shortage of qualified HPC job applicants, as 
HPC  is  not  always  part  of  university  curricula  in  Europe.  It  is  crucial  to  promote  the  HPC 
skills and educational needs from a multidisciplinary point of view, intertwines both the 
computational and the domain-specific aspects, and to explore new training programmes that 

4

 
 
exploit the combination of a wider base of Web-programming skills with cloud-based access 
to HPC resources. More importantly, industry actors need to be encouraged to provide initial 
and on the job training for staff to address gaps that universities are, given the pace of change, 
not necessarily able to address. 

Regarding  fair  access  to  HPC  markets,  the  protective  barriers  of  the  main  HPC  world-
competitors (U.S.A., Japan and China) are still in place –by contrast, the EU is the most open 
market both for commercial and government procurements.  

5

 
 
2.  Introduction  

In  February  2012,  the  Commission  adopted  the  Communication  "High-Performance 
Computing: Europe's place in a global race"1. This Communication highlighted the strategic 
nature  of  High-Performance  Computing  (HPC)  as  a  crucial  asset  for  the  EU's  innovation 
capacity,  and  called  on  Member  States,  industry  and  the  scientific  communities,  in 
cooperation with the Commission, to step up joint efforts to ensure European leadership in the 
supply and use of HPC systems and services by 2020.  

The  Communication  outlined  the  EU  strategy  on  HPC  with  an  Action  Plan  towards  the 
overall  goal  of  European  leadership,  indicating  that  the  implementation  of  this  Action  Plan 
would be reported to European Parliament and Council by 2015.  

In this document, the Communication will be referred to as "HPC Communication", and the 
EU strategy on HPC as "European HPC strategy". 
The  Competitiveness  Council  on  May  2013  adopted  conclusions2  on 
the  HPC 
Communication, highlighting the role of HPC in the EU's innovation capacity and stressing its 
strategic  importance  to  the  EU's  industrial  and  scientific  capabilities,  and  as  well  as  to  its 
citizens. These conclusions invite Commission to report to the Council on progress made in 
the plans for HPC before the end of 2015. 

This document is a European Commission staff working document for information purposes. 
It  does  not  represent  an  official  position  of  the  Commission  on  this  issue,  nor  does  it 
anticipate such a position. 

Acronyms  

The following acronyms appear frequently in this report:  

Contractual Public Private Partnership  
European Exascale Software Initiative 
European Strategic Forum on Research Infrastructures 

cPPP    
EESI    
ESFRI  
ETP4HPC   European Technology Platform for HPC 
European Union (of 28 Member States) 
EU 
European Union (28 Member States) plus Norway and Switzerland 
EU+ 
High Performance Computing 
HPC 
High Performance Data Analytics 
HPDA  
Independent Software Vendor 
ISV 
Pre-Commercial Procurement 
PCP 
Public Procurement of Innovative solutions 
PPI 
Public-Private Partnership 
PPP 
Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe 
PRACE   
SME HPC Adoption Programme in Europe 
SHAPE   
Small and Medium-size Enterprise(s) 
SME 

1 COM(2012) 45 final 
2 Competitiveness Council on 24 May 2013, Doc. 9808/13 

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3.  The rationale for High Performance Computing  

High  Performance  Computing  (HPC)  mainly  refers  in  this  document  to  the  use  of  powerful 
supercomputers3  to  solve  complex  computational  problems,  as  a  synonym  for  high-end 
computing, supercomputing, world-class computing, etc., but the term HPC is also used for a 
large number of systems that cover all technical servers that are used for highly computational 
or  data  intensive  tasks  by  scientists,  engineers,  financial  analysts  and  others4.  HPC  may  be 
carried  out  on  premise  in  dedicated  HPC  data  centres,  or  in  private,  public  or  hybrid  cloud 
environments.  HPC  methodologies  include  modelling  and  simulation,  advanced  data 
analytics, visualization, and others. 

The  fastest  machines  are  currently  running  in  the  order  of  a  few  dozen  petaflops,  i.e.  a 
petaflop  is  1015  (one  thousand  million  million)  floating  point  operations  per  second  (flop). 
The  next  frontier  is  the  exascale  computing,  several  hundred  times  faster  than  current 
machines (1018 or 1 million million million flops). 

Context 

Computing  is  at  the  core  of  major  advances  and  innovation  in  the  digital  age,  providing  us 
with a better living environment and shaping our social habits, from the Internet to consumer 
electronics, transportation to manufacturing, medicine, energy, and scientific applications.  

This digital innovation force is increasingly predicated on our ability to process large amounts 
of  data  and  carry  out  complex  computations.  And  this  ability  relies  on  the  enormous 
opportunities  for  innovation  and  change  created  by  major  ICT  developments  that  have  not 
been matched by any other area of technology, e.g. the mobile phone, a device that did not 
exist  20  years  ago.  The  ICT  revolution  is  not  over  yet.  In  the  next  few  years,  the  exascale 
computing  frontier  will  be  reached,  and  faster  custom  processors  will  power  our  every-day 
devices.  

A mid-’70s Cray supercomputer was capable of performing 80 million operations per 
second,  while  the  graphics-processing  unit  in  an  iPhone  5S  is  nearly  1,000  times 
more powerful. 

In the Internet of Things (IoT) 4.9 billion5 connected things will be in use in 2015, up 
30  percent  from  2014,  and  will  reach  25  billion  by  2020.  Global  IP  traffic  has 
increased  fivefold  over  the  past  five  years,  and  will  increase  threefold  over  the  next 
five  years.  Annual  global  IP  traffic6  will  pass  the  zettabyte  (1021  bytes  or  1000 
exabytes)  threshold  by  2016,  and  will  reach  2  zettabytes  per  year  by  2019,  or  168 
exabytes per month.  

From 2005 to 2020, the digital universe will grow7 by a factor of 300. It is expected 
that  by  2018,  4.5  billion  smartphones  and  2.5  billion  social  networks  users  will  be 

3A supercomputer interconnects a big number of processors (from a few hundred to several thousand –with each processor 
composed of multiple computing units or "cores") to work in parallel inside one system or in close proximity to perform 
massive and fast computations. The fastest machine (November 2015) is the China's Tianhe-2 at 33.86 petaflops 
4 HPC servers range from sub-€10,000 commodity clusters to 
spectrum from entry-level to high-end machines) 
5 Gartner, Inc., "Predicts 2015: The Internet of Things."  
6 CISCO, The Zettabyte Era—Trends and Analysis 
7 IDC (International Data Corporation), THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE IN 2020 

€100 million-plus, one-of-a-kind supercomputers (a continuous 

7

 
 
 
  
 
 
 
                                                 
connected.  From  2012  until  2020,  the  digital  universe  (a  measure  of  all  the  digital 
data created, replicated, and consumed in a single year) will about double every two 
years, jumping from 130 exabytes in 2005 to 40 zettabytes by 2020 (more than 5,200 
gigabytes for every man, woman, and child in 2020).  

High Performance Computing and the Digital Single Market 

HPC is the engine to power the new global digital economy. The nature of computing is 
changing  with  an  increasing  number  of  data-intensive  critical  applications.  The 
convergence of HPC, Big Data and Cloud will ease the access to a wealth of data and 
computing  power  enabling  new  applications  and  software.  Mastering  HPC 
technologies  is  vital  for  Europe's  innovation  capabilities  in  science,  industry  and 
society. 

In the massively connected digital economy, massive amounts of data are produced, moved, 
stored and processed with the help of huge computational power. HPC is working behind the 
scenes and pervading many aspects of everyday life: cars and planes, toothbrushes, glasses, 
animation movies, and new drugs are designed with HPC; HPC is critical tool for decision-
making;  weather  forecast,  electricity  grids,  water  supply  networks,  truck  and  flight 
scheduling, and defence applications are using HPC simulation. The nature of computing is 
changing  with  an  increasing  number  of  data-intensive  critical  applications,  like  e.g. 
climate change.  The emerging trends in which HPC will be most influential in this process 
are the following: 

•  The convergence of HPC, Big Data and Cloud will allow new applications and services 
to the citizen to emerge. The exponential growth of data, networking and computing will 
continue to be a key driver of societal changes, scientific advances and productivity 
gains across the economy, bringing IT muscle to industry (in particular SMEs), allowing 
ground breaking innovation, with profound effects on society, science and business. 

•  New  access  and  deliver  methods  will  allow  the  "democratisation  of  HPC";  easier 
access  to  the  computing  power  of  HPC  and  the  accompanying  software  and  tools  to 
process  and  analyse  Big  Data  will  be  key  for  scientific  and  industrial  innovation;  for 
example,  the  "cloudification"  of  HPC  resources  and  simulation  and  software  analytics 
tools will allow a much larger number of SMEs without in-house capabilities to produce 
better  products  and  services,  or  a  cloud-based  HPC  and  data  e-infrastructure  for 
researchers  to  easily  harness  huge  computing  capabilities  and  an  increasingly  wealth  of 
open raw data and information (Open Science Cloud). 

•  The  intertwining  of  HPC  with  a  growing  number  of  industrial  applications  and 
scientific domains makes HPC the engine to power the new global digital economy. 
HPC  has  to  be  considered  in  a  multidisciplinary  way,  as  computational  aspects  will  be 
increasingly  integrated  in  training,  skill  development  and  education  curricula  of  many 
different areas e.g. in bio-chemistry, pharmacology, engineering, entertaining, financing.   

8

 
 
 
 
 
 
These developments are in line with one of the Commission's priorities, the Digital Single 
Market (DSM) strategy8. HPC is one of its key contributors next to Cloud services, Big Data 
and Internet of things (IoT). 

The connected car is already on the market and generating significant revenue for car 
makers  and  tech  companies.  By  2020,  there  will  be  a  quarter  billion  connected 
vehicles  on  the  road,  enabling  new  in-vehicle  services  and  automated  driving 
capabilities.5  Connected  cars  will  be  built  with  the  necessary  hardware  to  allow 
people  to  access  cloud  services  like  sophisticated  infotainment  applications,  traffic 
and weather alerts, and always-available, contextual, predictive navigation.  

The  services  industries  will  also  use  HPC  to  cope  with  the  enormous  amount  of 
information  produced  by  the  vehicles,  such  as  real-time  traffic  management  or 
predictive maintenance. 

New economic value chains emerge from HPC-powered analysis of Big Data. PayPal, 
a multibillion-dollar eBay company, has integrated HPC servers and storage into its 
datacentre workflow for sophisticated fraud detection on eBay and Skype transactions 
in  real  time  before  it  hits  credit  cards.  IDC  estimates  that  using  HPC  has  allowed 
PayPal to save more than €500 million to date.

Mastering  HPC  technologies  is  therefore  vital  for  Europe's  innovation  capabilities  in 
science,  industry  and  society.  The  Council  highlighted2  in  its  conclusions  on  the  HPC 
Communication that HPC is an important asset for the EU's innovation capacity and stressed 
its strategic importance to the EU's industrial and scientific capabilities as well as its citizens.  

The  case  for  HPC's  importance  for  Europe  can  be  made  from  the  industrial,  scientific,  and 
societal point of view: 

Industrial competitiveness and the digital economy  

In the global digital economy, to out-compute is to out-compete.  HPC and Big Data will 
drive major advances and innovation in the upcoming global digital economy, enabling 
traditional  computational-intensive  sectors  to  move  up  into  higher  value  products  and 
services and a vast range of new applications. New HPC delivery and usage models will 
be developed to harness huge computing power and memory capacity and put within the 
reach of business, SMEs and researchers, e.g. via HPC-empowered Clouds. 

Industrial  output  accounted  for  25.2%  of  EU  GDP  in  2013.9  Different  studies  have  firmly 
established  the  link  between  HPC  and  industrial  competitiveness.  97%  of  the  industrial 
companies  using  HPC  consider  it  indispensable  for  their  ability  to  innovate,  compete,  and 
survive.10  Industrial  sectors  that  leverage  HPC  could  add  up  to  2-3%  to  Europe’s  GDP  in 
2020 by improving their products and services.10 

Europe  is  leader  in  the  use  of  HPC-powered  applications:  the  users  of  HPC  systems  and 
applications  in  Europe  include  the  most  profitable  and  vibrant  industrial  sectors,  e.g. 
manufacturing - €6,500 billion of GDP and 30 m illion jobs, oil & gas - €440 billion of GDP 

8 European Commission, Digital Single Market 
9 CIA World Factbook. 2014 
10 IDC study "A Strategic Agenda for European Leadership in Supercomputing: HPC 2020"  

9

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
and  170000  jobs,  pharmaceutical  industry  -  € 800  billion  of  GDP  and  40%  of  worldwide 
market share and medicine - €1,000 billion of public spending.    

HPC plays a key role in reducing the environmental impact of planes. The design of 
the  Airbus  A380  has  exploited  aerodynamics  simulation  &  HPC  to  carry  twice  as 
many passengers for the same noise level, using less than 3 litres of fuel per person 
per 100 km and less than 75g of CO2 per person per km.11 

HPC  and  Big  Data  enable  traditional  computational-intensive  sectors  to  move  up  into 
higher  value  products  and  services,  like  smart  manufacturing.  The  new  manufacturing 
and  production  processes  of  Industry  4.012  will  use  HPC  to  become  more  productive, 
efficient  and  more  adaptable  to  meet  specific  customer  needs;  and  to  handle  the  increasing 
complexity  of  decentralised  networked  intelligence  of  the  new  industrial  facilities.    HPC-
based cloud, simulation and data analysis make possible the new on-demand integration  for 
business-to-business (B2B), for example big manufacturers with thousands of smaller trading 
partners and suppliers are able to virtually customise and test their products rather than using 
a costly traditional production-line validation process.  

In  addition,  data,  modelling  and  simulation  pave  the  way  for  new  science,  business  and 
applications  that  we  are  far  from  imagining  now,  e.g.  personalised  medical  diagnosis  and 
treatment,  cosmetics,  food  security,  sustainable  agriculture,  bio-economy,  accurate  global 
climate models, etc. bringing enormous social and economic benefits.  

Domain example: Manufacturing 

Manufacturing  contributed  about  30  million  jobs  and  16%  of  EU  GDP  (€6,500  billion)  in 
2013,  and  the  European  Commission  aims  to  increase  that  figure  to  20%  by  2020.13 
Manufacturing represents two-thirds of EU exports and two-thirds of EU private-sector R&I 
investment but Europe lost seven million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2013.14  HPC 
enables  smart  manufacturing  that  could  create  new  manufacturing  jobs  and  return 
some lost manufacturing jobs to Europe.   

HPC has enabled European automakers to increase productivity by reducing the time 
for the development of new vehicle platforms from an average 60 months to 24 months 
while greatly improving safety (so reducing fatalities), environmental friendliness, and 
passenger comfort.  

HPC  is  critical  for  this  innovation  wave  in  the  car  industry,  allowing  the  fast 
exploration of new technical solution needed to optimize the product and reducing the 
number of iterations to design and validate a connected and autonomous vehicle in a 
complex internal and external environment where a huge amount of data is produced 
by the car and processed by it. 

Renault  together  with  ESI  Group  and  Ecole  Mines  St  Etienne  used  42  million  core 
hours on the PRACE Tier-0 CURIE machine for performing the biggest multi-physics 
car  optimization  study  ever  made15.  This  simulations  consists  on  hundreds  crash 
simulations  on  meshes  of  20  million  finites  elements  applied  to  more  than  120 

11 http://www.prace-ri.eu/IMG/pdf/AIRBUS_EricChaput.pdf 
12 BMBF (Federal Ministry for Education and Research) Project of the Future: Industry 4.0 
13 Industrial Revolution Brings Industry Back to Europe. European Commission technical briefing report. 2012 
14 The Parliament Magazine, "European Manufacturing a Powerful Engine for Growth." September 28, 2014.  
15 https://www.esi-group.com/sites/default/files/resource/customer_success/4125/success_story_renault_dacia_lodgy.pdf 

10

 
 
                                                 
different  parameter  to  study.  This  first  study  provided  to  Renault  unprecedented 
results  in  mass  reduction,  CO2  limitation,  safety  improvement,  and  will  be 
determinant for fulfilling future EuroNCAP6 safety rules 

Intelligent analysis of real-time data produced by airplanes can predict faults before 
they happen (predictive maintenance). SAP reports that Spirit AeroSystems Inc. -one 
of the largest manufacturers of aero structures- achieved 25% shorter production flow 
times, 30% lower assembly inventory levels; and 40% lower overtime expenses as well 
as  $2 million in savings on inventory by using high-performance data analytics.16  

Europe spent about €450 million on the HPC ecosy stem for manufacturing in 2013 and will 
spend about €638 million in this sector in 2018 Error! Bookmark not defined.. A substantial, growing 
portion  of  this  spending  is  by  manufacturing  SMEs,  who,  like  larger  manufacturing  firms, 
employ HPC to accelerate innovation.  

New HPC delivery and usage models will be developed to harness huge computing power and 
memory capacity and put within the reach of business, SMEs and researchers, e.g. via HPC-
empowered Clouds. For industry and in particular for SMEs, available and easy-to-use HPC 
resources is a priority for their competitiveness and for better adaptation to market demands 
especially in terms of innovation and fast renewal of their product and service offerings –this 
is one of the main objectives of Industry 4.0.  

The European initiative I4MS17 (ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs) in Horizon 
2020  LEIT/ICT  promotes  HPC  Cloud-based  modelling,  simulation  and  analytics 
services  for  integrating  multiple  tools  across  the  process  chain,  for  exploiting  the 
dynamic availability of "big data" and for integrating novel mobile interfaces for data 
management  and  decision  support.  One  of  the  I4MS  projects  (Fortissimo)  aims  to 
make  European  industry  more  competitive  globally,  by  making  simulation  services 
accessible  to  industrial  users,  particularly  SMEs,  via  a  one-stop-shop  HPC-based 
cloud infrastructure. 

Domain example: Health 

The  health  sector  represents  10%  of  EU  GDP  and  8%  of  the  EU  workforce.18  The 
pharmaceutical  industry  alone  contributes  €800  billion  to  Europe's  GDP.  Biology  is  fast 
becoming  a  digital  science,  and  HPC  is  increasingly  important  for  advanced  medical 
research,  biomedicine,  bioinformatics,  epidemiology,  and  personalized  medicine—
including "Big Data" aspects. Europe spent about €416 million on the HPC ecosystem for 
bio-life  sciences  in  2013  and  will  spend  about  €510  million  in  this  sector  in  2018. Error! 
Bookmark not defined.  

Swiss  pharmaceutical  giant  Novartis  &  Schrödinger,  a  global  life  sciences  and 
materials science software company with offices in Munich and Mannheim, Germany, 
greatly  accelerated  the  testing  of  drug  candidates  by  using  HPC.  They  tested  21 
million drug candidate molecules, using a new technical computing (HPC) algorithm 
Schrödinger developed. The successful run cost only about €10,000. Schrödinger has 
completed even larger runs since this.19 

16 https://ideas.sap.com/d16183 
17 I4MS http://i4ms.eu/, and Fortissimo http://www.fortissimo-project.eu/project/the-project.html 
18 Health and Health Systems. European Commission report. 2014 
19 HPC Speeds Innovation for Suppliers and Other SMBs. IDC white paper. November 2014. 

11

 
 
                                                 
The  Center  for  Pediatric  Genomic  Medicine  at  Children's  Mercy  Hospital,  Kansas 
City, Missouri, has been using HPC to help save the lives of critically ill children. In 
2010,  the  centre's  work  was  named  one  of  Time  magazine's  top  10  medical 
breakthroughs. Roughly 4,100 genetic diseases affect humans, and these are the main 
causes of infant deaths. One infant suffering from liver failure was saved thanks to 25 
hours  of  supercomputer  time  to  analyse  120  billion  nucleotide  sequences  and 
narrowed the cause of the illness down to two genetic variants. For 48% of the cases 
the  centre  works  on,  HPC-powered  genetic  diagnosis  points  the  way  toward  a  more 
effective treatment.20 

Scientific leadership  

Scientific computing has enabled a revolution in all scientific disciplines and today is the 
“third  pillar  of  science”.  HPC  is  a  key  element  of  the  innovation  environment  for  the 
data-driven science in the European Science Cloud.  

Over the last  20  years, the computational  capability  of the world’s  fastest computers  has 
increased by a factor of over a million in that time. This has paved the way for a revolution 
in  the  way  science  is  carried  out.  All  scientific  disciplines  are  becoming  today 
"computational".  Scientific  computing  is  often  called  the  “third  pillar  of  science”, 
standing  right  next  to  theoretical  analysis  and  experiments  for  scientific  discovery.  HPC 
has  become  a  fundamental  tool  for  scientific  discoveries  and  innovation,  because  of  its 
increasing capability to model, simulate and to process data.  

The  Nobel  Prize  Chemistry  201321  was  awarded  for  "the  development  of  multi-scale 
models for complex chemical systems". The quantum theoretical calculations needed to 
simulate  chemical  reactions  require  a  huge  amount  of  computational  power.  Nobel 
Prize  winners  (Karplus,  Levitt  and  Warshel)  developed  computer  models  that  could 
apply quantum and classical calculations to different parts of a single molecule. 

Computation becomes crucially important in scientific situations such as: 

• 

the problem at hand cannot be solved by traditional experimental or theoretical means, 
such as attempting to predict climate change; 

•  experimentation may be dangerous, e.g., characterization of toxic materials; 

• 

the problem would be too expensive or time-consuming to try to solve by other 
avenues, e.g. determination of the structure of proteins. 

HPC simulation is also an important alternative for animal testing. The social and economic 
costs of experimental ("live") science and engineering research on animals have skyrocketed 
in  the  past  decade.  This  has  made  HPC  increasingly  attractive  from  a  social  and  financial 
point of view. 

The REACH Regulation issued in 2006, the 7th Amendment of 2003 of the European 
Cosmetics Directive and the new European Regulation on cosmetic products issued in 
2009 created an unprecedented need for alternatives to animal testing in Europe. On 
March  2013  a  full  ban  on  the  marketing  of  cosmetics  products  tested  on  animals 

20 http://www.childrensmercy.org/Health_Care_Professionals/Research/Pediatric_Genomic_Medicine/News_and_Features/ 
21 http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/10/computational-chemists-take-nobel-prize-2013 

12

 
 
                                                 
entered  into  force  in  the  EU.  This  heavily  triggered  the  development  of  alternative 
testing methods to reduce to a minimum the need for animal testing and, in the case of 
cosmetics, to fully substitute them.  

The NOTOX project22, co-funded by the European Commission and Cosmetics Europe 
(the European trade association of the cosmetics industry), significantly contributes to 
this  endeavour  by  developing  and  validating  predictive  bioinformatics  models 
characterizing long-term toxicity responses. 

Scientific  advances  require  an  increasing  computing  power  reaching  exascale  capacity.  For 
example, "Understanding the human" requires sophisticated computational models that push 
the boundaries of supercomputing and Big Data. 

The Human Brain Project (HBP) 23 is pushing the boundaries of supercomputing. The 
hardware,  software  and  data  infrastructure  required  to  run  cellular  brain  model 
simulations  up  to  the  size  of  a  full  human  brain  require  exascale  capabilities  in 
computing power and in storage and data handling, but also advanced features (some 
of  them  not  fully  available  today)  such  as  tightly  integrated  visualization,  analytics 
and  simulation,  efficient  data  management,  dynamic  resource  management  for  co-
scheduling  of  heterogeneous  resources,  and  a  significant  enlargement  of  memory 
capacity based on power-efficient memory technologies.  

The  Virtual  Physiological  Human  (VPH)24  project  aims  to  provide  digital 
representations  of  the  entire  human  body,  referred  to  as  virtual  humans.  Instead  of 
focusing on finding a specific cure for a specific disease, the VPH approach is to treat 
individual  patients  rather  than  treating  diseases.  The  virtual  humans  are  based  on 
data collected from real patients, including biological, imaging, clinical and genomic 
data.  As  the  data  is  unique  to  each  patient,  it  will  enable  academic,  clinical  and 
industrial  researchers  to  improve  their  understanding  of  human  physiology  and 
pathology,  to  derive  predictive  hypotheses  and  simulations,  and  to  develop  and  test 
new therapies. The eventual outcome will be better disease diagnosis and treatment, 
along with improved prevention tools in healthcare. 

HPC is also a key element of the Science Cloud. The future European Science Cloud is set 
to  create  an  innovation  environment  for  the  data-driven  science,  requiring  novel  tools 
and easier access methods to data and computing resources. The U.S.A. is already moving 
in  this  direction.  The  NSF  Jetstream25  initiative  is  setting  up  the  first  cloud  for  science  and 
engineering  across  all  research  areas  supported  by  NSF,  adding  cloud-based  HPC 
computation  to  the  national  U.S.A.  cyber-infrastructure.  Researchers  will  be  able  to  create 
virtual machines on the remote resource that look and feel like their lab workstation or home 
machine, but are able to harness thousands of times the computing power.  

Societal challenges  

HPC is a critical tool for transforming complex challenges affecting our societies into 
social, scientific and industrial innovation 

22 http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/10/computer-aided-models-replace-animal-testing 
23 https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ 
24 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/virtual-physiological-human 
25 National Science Foundation (NSF) Jetstream cloud service 

13

 
 
                                                 
In  modern  societies,  citizens  expect  sustained  improvements  in  their  everyday  life.  At  the 
same time, the world is confronted with an increasing number of complex challenges – at the 
local  urban  and  rural  level  as  well  as  at  the  planetary  scale.  HPC  is  a  critical  tool  for 
responding  to  these  challenges  and  transforming  them  into  social,  scientific  and  industrial 
innovation. New applications are emerging thanks to HPC in areas such as:  

•  Health,  demographic  change  and  wellbeing:  new  therapies  heavily  rely  on  HPC  for 
understanding the nature of disease, discovering new drugs, and customising therapies 
to the specific needs of a patient. 

•  Secure, clean and efficient energy: HPC is a critical tool in developing fusion energy, 
in  designing  high  performance  photovoltaic  materials  or  optimising  turbines  for 
electricity production.  

•  Smart,  green  and  integrated  transport:  the  management  of  large  traffic  flow  e.g.  in 
smart  cities  will  require  the  real  time  analysis  of  huge  amounts  of  data  in  order  to 
provide multivariable decision/data analytics support on your mobile or car. 

•  Climate: HPC underpins climate study and prediction, and safety in the extraction of 

fossil fuels (gas, oil). 

•  Food security, sustainable agriculture, marine research and the bio-economy: HPC is 
used to optimise the production of food and analyse sustainability factors (e.g. weather 
forecast, plagues and diseases control, etc.). 

•  Official Statistics: Current promising efforts to develop EU data analytics services for 
policy  depend  to  a  large  extend  on  utilizing  the  potential  of  HPC  and  Big  Data  to 
provide  society  and  policy  makers  with  relevant,  accurate  and  timely  statistical 
information for decision making. 

From  1970  through  2012,  severe  weather  cost  149,959  lives  and  €270  billion  in 
economic damages in Europe26. Severe weather forecasting on national and regional 
scales  depends  heavily  on  HPC,  and  Europe  leads  the  world  in  numerical  weather 
forecasting.  The  weather  model  from  the  European  Centre  for  Medium-Range 
Weather  Forecasts  (UK)  proved  substantially  more  accurate  than  U.S.A.  models  in 
predicting  the  path  of  Hurricane  Sandy  that  devastated  America's  East  Coast  in 
201227. The MET Office, the UK’s National Weather Service, relies on more than 10 
million weather observations from sites around the world, a sophisticated atmospheric 
model  and  a  £30  million  IBM  supercomputer  to  generate  3,000  tailored  forecasts 
every day.28 

Agriculture  is  the  principal  means  of  livelihood  in  many  regions  of  the  developing 
world, and the future of our world depends on a sustainable agriculture at planetary 
level.  Besides  weather  prediction  and  climate  change  effects,  HPC  is  becoming 
critical  in  agricultural  activity,  plague  control,  pesticides  design  and  pesticides 
effects.  Climate data are used to understand the impacts on water and agriculture in 

26 Press release number 988. World Meteorological Organization. July 11, 2014. 
https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_998_en.html 
27 "Will U.S.A. Hurricane Forecasting Models Catch Up To Europe's?" National Geographic. October 27, 2013. 
28 http://archive.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-10-29/met_office_maps_storm_days_in_advance.html 

14

 
 
 
                                                 
the Middle East and North Africa region29, help local authorities in the management 
of water and agricultural resources, and assist vulnerable communities in the region 
through improved drought management and response. 

Applications  enabled  by  HPC  and  Clouds  are  becoming  part  of  agriculture30,  using 
for  example  radio-frequency  identification  tags  (RFIDs)  which  can  hold  and 
automatically  download  a  mass  of  data  on  the  bale’s  moisture  content,  weight  and 
GPS  position.  In  the  future,  micro-tags  of  the  size  of  soil  particles  will  be  deployed 
extensively  in  fields  measuring  such  things  as  moisture,  disease  burden  and  even 
whether the crop is ready to harvest or not. 

HPC as a strategic technology: the global race towards exascale computing  

Mastering  HPC  is  a  question  of  sovereignty  and  a  strategic  priority  for  the  most 
advanced nations. Strategic societal, scientific and economic needs are the drivers for 
the next generation exascale systems, requiring in some cases radical approaches (e.g. 
300-fold improvement in computing capability while staying at the same power budget). 

Supremacy  in  supercomputing  technology  is  not  for  the  sake  of  having  the  fastest 
supercomputer in the world, but to autonomously master a critical technology capable 
of giving a world leading competitive edge in a vast range of technologies, applications 
and  markets  that  heavily  depend  on  this  game-changing  technology.  The  risk  of 
depending on other regions is being technologically locked, delayed, or deprived of this 
strategic know-how by our competitors. 

HPC  has  become  indispensable  for  supporting  policy  making,  maintaining  national 
sovereignty  and  economic  competitiveness.  HPC  is  strategic  from  the  point  of  view  of 
sovereignty,  supporting  the  decision-making  process  in  political  decisions  for  energy,  home 
security,  or  climate  change,  or 
the  context  of  national  security  applications. 
Supercomputers are in the first line of the increasingly critical areas of cyber-war and cyber-
criminality  (in  particular  industrial  espionage),  helping  to  prevent  and  fight  today's 
sophisticated cyber-attacks and security breaches, insider threats and electronic fraud.  

in 

The cyber-breach31 in June 2015 on USA Office of Personnel Management (affecting 
the data of four million former and current federal employees) supports claims from 
senior military and intelligence officials that the U.S.A. is under more or less constant 
Cyber assault –e.g. recent intrusions and data breaches at the Inland Revenue Service, 
the Department of State and the White House. The scale of concern over the attacks 
than  9/11 
suggest 
(Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)). 

'far  more  serious…to  national  security' 

they  are 

that 

Mastering  HPC  technologies,  all  the  way  from  the  hardware  and  system  software  to 
applications,  has  become  a  national  strategic  priority  for  the  most  powerful  nations 

29 http://www.icba-ag4tomorrow.org/content/mawred-modeling-and-monitoring-agriculture-and-water-resources-
development#sthash.Lhd9pLjt.dpbs 
30 http://www.hpcwire.com/2011/02/21/the_high-tech_farm_report_cloud_computing_comes_to_agriculture/ 
31 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/breach-in-a-federal-computer-system-exposes-personnel-data.html?_r=0 

15

 
 
 
 
                                                 
 
including U.S.A., China, Japan, Russia, and India. The immense risk is being technologically 
locked, delayed or deprived of strategic know-how. 

The U.S.A. government recently decide to block the exporting of Intel's last generation 
processors to upgrade some of China's most powerful supercomputers, claiming that 
the computers were being used for nuclear weapons research.32 This technology ban 
limitation is a serious blow to the Chinese race to exascale computing. 

What  this  global  race  is  really  about  is  supremacy  in  supercomputing  and  in  all  the 
disciplines and markets that depend heavily on this game-changing technology. Strategic 
societal,  scientific  and  economic  needs  are  the  drivers  for  the  next  generation  exascale 
systems.  The  much  larger  and  more  complex  datasets  of  modern  science  and  engineering 
drive  the  increasing  need  for  significantly  higher  performing  technologies.  Exascale 
technologies will bring substantial benefits to application domains that traditionally use HPC, 
and  most  importantly,  will  open  up  opportunities  in  new  emerging  areas  and  address  big 
challenges that currently cannot be tackled. 

The aerospace industry has an ever increasing need of more computational power to 
run simulations for aircraft design, behaviour of components in flight, etc. Advanced 
computing  and  visualisation  capabilities  cut  development/run  times  from  months  to 
days.  Airbus  (one  of  the  leaders  in  the  aerospace  industry  to  use  HPC)  aims  at 
simulating  a  whole  aircraft,  superseding  the  current  ‘piece  by  piece’  approach  and 
saving millions of euros in design, development and maintenance costs, will require at 
least exascale performance.  

The  development  of  exascale  technologies  is  not  for  the  sake  of  having  the  fastest 
supercomputer in the world. The goal is to build "first of a kind" systems rather than "one 
of  a  kind".  The  transition  to  exascale  computing  is  an  opportunity  for  the  European  supply 
industry  to  introduce  Intellectual  Property  (IP)  generated  in  the  EU  and  in  a  wide  range  of 
technologies in the computing continuum from smart phones to embedded systems to servers, 
feeding  the  broader  ICT  market  within  a  few  years  of  their  introduction  in  high-end 
HPC –giving a competitive advantage to those developing them at an early stage. Section 
4 below discusses how this endeavour could be realised in the European HPC ecosystem. 

Thus advances made in the area of HPC such as new computational technologies, software, 
energy  efficiency,  storage  applications,  etc.  frequently  feed  into  the  consumer  mass  market 
and become available in households within about 5 years of their introduction in the HPC area 
(e.g. file systems and optimisations of the LINUX operating system). Conversely, computing 
components  and  technologies  developed  for  the  mass  market  (e.g.  energy  efficient 
microprocessors) are widely used for the cost-efficient design of HPC systems (e.g. the use of 
modified PC graphic cards as accelerators in HPC systems).  

The  development  of  next-generation  HPC  systems  is  motivated  by  very  challenging 
specifications  (e.g.  for  combinations  of  performance,  power  consumption  and  reliability), 
which serve as drivers for the development of novel technology. In many areas, this can only 
be done through a revolution rather than an evolution of technology. 

Exascale computing entails huge challenges, e.g. to efficiently program the millions of 
cores  connected  is  beyond  today's  algorithmic  capabilities.  Regarding  power 

32 PC Advisor. April 13, 2015. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/tech-industry/3607572/after-us-chip-block-chinas-plan-for-
100-petaflop-supercomputer-may-get-delayed/ 

16

 
 
                                                 
consumption,  a  simple  extrapolation  of  the  HPC  technology  used  in  the  fastest 
supercomputers of a couple of years ago would require 20 GW to power and cool an 
exascale machine, (nearly the peak electrical power generation of the Three Gorges 
Dam in China, the world's largest hydroelectric power plant of any type). 

The  fastest  supercomputer  as  of  November  2015  (Tianhe-2)  requires  ~18  MW  for 
operating  at  its  maximum  performance  (between  33  and  54  Petaflops).  The  total 
traction power of a Eurostar train is typically around 16 MW. The technology needs 
to  radically  evolve  to  achieve  a  300-fold  improvement  in  computing  power  while 
staying at the same power budget.  

Worldwide efforts in the HPC race 

Other  nations  including  U.S.A.,  China, Japan, Russia, and India  are racing ahead and 
have  declared  HPC  an  area  of  strategic  priority,  creating  national  programs  that  are 
investing large sums of money to develop HPC technology and deploying state-of-the-art 
exascale supercomputers. The U.S.A. is the world leader in systems and technologies, but 
China is ramping up HPC spending faster than any other nation or region, fielding the 
top-world  supercomputers,  developing  indigenous  technologies  and  supporting  the 
creation of world-wide players in the ITC/HPC market. 

U.S.A. 

The  U.S.A.  has  historically  purchased  just  under  half  of  all  of  the  HPC  systems  sold  each 
year. The U.S.A. has large, established system vendors and strong capital markets. As a single 
nation, it is easier for the U.S.A. to focus its investments on a few very large supercomputers, 
rather than having to collect and distribute funding among a larger number of beneficiaries. 
The U.S.A. government has long-standing models for R&D collaborations with HPC vendors, 
many  of  which  include  supercomputer  procurements.  The  U.S.A.  government  hopes  to 
achieve practical exascale supercomputing in the 2020s at a cost of about U.S.A. $200 million 
per machine and 20 to 30 megawatts of power. (One megawatt could cost a U.S.A. national 
lab about $1 million annually).33 

The  U.S.A.  government  is  substantially  under-investing  in  advanced  software  development, 
and its future leadership is vulnerable because of this. The most important initiatives taken by 
the U.S.A. are the following: 

•  The  Obama  Administration  issued  on  29  July  2015  an  executive  order  to  establish  the 
National  Strategic  Computing  Initiative  (NSCI34)  aiming  at  a  multi-agency  strategic 
vision  and  Federal  investment  strategy  to  maximize  the  benefits  of  HPC  for  economic 
competitiveness and scientific discovery for the United States. The U.S.A. acknowledges at 
the  highest  level  that  investment  in  HPC  has  contributed  substantially  to  national 
economic  prosperity  and  rapidly  accelerated  scientific  discovery,  and  that  creating  and 
deploying  technology  at  the  leading  edge  is  vital  to  advancing  the  Administration's 
priorities and spurring innovation. 

•  The  ExaSCALE  Computing  Leadership  Act  of  2015  will  create  research  partnerships 
between  industry,  universities  and  U.S.A.  Department  of  Energy's  national  labs  to 

33 http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/when-will-we-have-an-exascale-supercomputer 
34 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/29/executive-order-creating-national-strategic-computing-initiative 

17

 
 
                                                 
research and develop at least two exascale supercomputer architectures, with the goal of 
having  a  fully  operational  computer  system  that  has  reached  "exascale"  –  a  measure  of 
speed that is beyond any other system in the world – by 2023. 

•  The  U.S.A.  Department  of  Energy  launched  CORAL  35  36,  a  single  $525  million 
procurement process (similar to PCP)  to acquire three next-generation supercomputers 
with  strong  R&I  requirements  —each  capable  of  performing  0.1  to  0.2  exaflops,  and 
being developed by IBM, Mellanox, Nvidia Corp., and other U.S.A. companies for a 2017 
debut.37  

• 

In addition, the annual budget of the DoE to the Exascale Computing Initiative is funded 
to a level of ~€150 million in  2015 for the exascale ecosystem (co-design, software, tools, 
etc.), and increasing to ~$270 million in 2016 (and similar levels for the years to follow). 

•  American  intelligence  agency  IARPA  has  launched  "Cryogenic  Computer  Complexity" 
(C3)  program  to  develop  an  exascale  supercomputer,  with  "a  simplified  cooling 
infrastructure  and  a  greatly  reduced  footprint."  The  project  has  awarded  contracts  to 
three  major  technology  companies:  International  Business  Machines,  Raytheon  BBN 
Technologies and Northrop Grumman. 

China 

China is ramping up HPC spending faster than any other nation or region, although increases 
may  slow  down.  Utilization  of  Chinese  supercomputers  is  typically  much  lower  than  in 
Europe,  the  U.S.A.,  or  Japan.  China's  growth  in  supercomputer  capacity  is  outpacing  the 
growth  of  China's  HPC  user  base.  More  than  85%  of  China's  supercomputers  come  from 
U.S.A. vendors today. European HPC system vendors have no strong presence in China.  

The U.S.A. block on Intel technology exports will accelerate China's initiatives to develop 
indigenous  processors.  China's  HPC  vendors—Lenovo,  Inspur,  Huawei,  and  Sugon 
(Dawning)—are  gaining  market  experience.  China  has  at  least  five  initiatives  under  way  to 
advance  the  development  of  indigenous  processors  for  HPC  systems,  and  some  of  China's 
(and the world's) most powerful supercomputers now incorporate Chinese processors. There 
is a very strong likelihood that the next big machine will be based on the indigenous ShenWei 
CPU  instead  of  Intel  products.  The  slowing  down  of  China's  domestic  economy  will  likely 
curtail the growth of HPC spending. 

Japan 

Japan  has  twice  fielded  the  world's  most  powerful  supercomputer,  most  recently  (2011)  the 
€400 million, Fujitsu-built K computer at RIKEN.  Japan seems intent on competing for HPC 
performance  leadership,  but  Japan's  periodic  efforts  to  deploy  the  world's  number  one 
supercomputer  indicate  that  Japan  may  not  be  able  to  compete  on  a  sustained  basis  with 
U.S.A. or Chinese funding levels. Japanese vendors Fujitsu and NEC may soon ramp up their 
efforts in Europe's comparatively open HPC market. 

35 http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/04/09/argonnes-200-million-supercomputing-award/ 
36 http://www.anl.gov/articles/us-department-energy-awards-200-million-next-generation-supercomputer-its-argonne-
national 
37 http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/ibm-redesigned-supercomputers-to-solve-big-data-problems 

18

 
 
                                                 
Japan has just concluded the Feasibility Study of Future HPCI (High Performance Computing 
Infrastructure) systems, launched by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science 
and Technology). The project spans three systems teams and one application team. The design 
specifications aim to support the creation of a high-end computing system (near-exascale) in 
the  2018-2020  timeframe38,  i.e.  the  next  incarnation  of  the  K  machine  (fastest  system  in 
2012).  This  machine  is  expected  to  be  the  country’s  first  near-exascale  system39  (—in  the 
order  of  0.6  exaflops)  a  $1.38  billion  undertaking  that’s  already  underway  with  expected 
installation in 2019 and full-steam production in 2020. 

Russia and India:  

Russian  supercomputing  company  RSC  group  and  the  Russian  Academy  of  Sciences  have 
proposed  collaboration  with  India  to  set  up  supercomputing  facilities  that  will  rival  China's 
Tianhe-2,  the  world's  fastest  supercomputer.  Individually,  these  countries  continue  their 
efforts in developing supercomputers based on indigenous technology.40 

India has committed41 about $2 billion dollars (Rs 12,000 crore) to the Indian Space Research 
to  develop  a  high-performance 
Organisation  and 
supercomputer  by  2018.  India’s  government-backed  computing  agency,  C-DAC,  also 
announced  a  $750  million  (Rs  4,500  crore)  blueprint  to  set  up  70  supercomputers  over  the 
next five years. 

the  Indian  Institute  of  Science 

38 http://www.cnmeonline.com/news/japan-outlines-2020-exascale-supercomputer-project/ 
39 http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/03/18/details-emerge-japans-future-exascale-system/ 
40 http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/04/09/russia-india-explore-joint-supercomputing-project/ 
41 http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/04/09/russia-india-explore-joint-supercomputing-project/ 

19

 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
4.  The European HPC ecosystem 

Europe  is  falling  behind  other  regions  of  the  world  because  of  its  under-investment  in 
establishing  a  complete  HPC  ecosystem.  No  single  Member  State  has  the  financial  and 
related means to compete effectively in HPC against the U.S.A. or China. The European 
HPC  ecosystem  is  inherently  more  challenging  to  organize  and  collaboratively  advance 
than its competitors'.  

However, Europe has all it takes to be a global player in HPC, exploiting its strong assets 
(e.g.  power-efficient  nanoelectronics,  interconnect  and  processor  designs,  and  parallel 
programing  and  codes)  in  order  to  get  European  industry  back  as  technology  leading-
edge supplier and reinforce its position as a world-leader in the use of HPC.  

The goal is to leverage on technologies in the computing continuum, from smart phones to 
embedded systems to servers, feeding the broader ICT in the longer run with in EU-made 
technologies.  The  key  is  co-design,  choosing  and  developing  technologies  that  really  fit 
the needs of important applications and their users. 

Member  States  have  their  own  histories  and  interests.  The  European  HPC  ecosystem  is 
inherently  more  challenging  to  organize  and  collaboratively  advance  than  its  single-nation 
counterparts  in  the  U.S.A.,  China,  and  Japan.  Until  recently,  organized  HPC  initiatives  in 
Europe  were  largely  confined  to  the  national  and  regional  levels,  and  pan-European  HPC 
collaboration was far more limited.  

No single Member State has the financial and related means to compete effectively in HPC 
against  the  U.S.A.  or  China—the  world's  number  one  and  number  two  national  funders  of 
HPC  technology  development  and  consumption  today.  Japan  is  another  nation  that  is 
determined to remain a global scientific and industrial leader with the help of HPC. Only by 
joining efforts can Member States establish an HPC ecosystem with enough critical mass and 
realize the goal to attain leadership in the supply (production) and use (consumption) of HPC.  

The  HPC  Communication  highlighted  that  Europe  was  falling  behind  other  regions  of  the 
world because of its under-investment in establishing a complete HPC ecosystem: to acquire 
leadership-class computers, secure its own independent HPC system supply, and deploy HPC 
services to industry and SMEs for simulation, visualisation and prototyping.  

The  underdevelopment  of  the  HPC  ecosystem  has  a  double  negative  effect:  there  is  not 
enough HPC capacity to cater for the demand by science and industry; and there is also not 
enough  European  supply  industry  that  designs  and  builds  HPC  systems.  As  a  consequence, 
research may need to relocate outside Europe, access to advanced systems is insufficient, and 
software  and  tools  development,  especially  those  linked  to  hardware,  is  disadvantaged. 
Europe of course continues to be an appealing sales market for HPC system vendors from 3rd 
countries. European HPC software and services are adapted and tuned to these HPC systems 
and in turn benefit their (non-EU) vendors. 

The European HPC ecosystem has definitely changed in the last few years, advancing towards 
European  HPC  leadership  as  a  21st-century  prerequisite  for  scientific,  industrial  and 
economic leadership.  From 2010 a number of important developments took place:  

20

 
 
 
 
 
•  The successful formation of a European (complementing national) awareness on HPC, 
structured by the Commission-led effort to create the first Europe-wide HPC strategy 
around the HPC Communication. 

•  The  PRACE42  partnership,  establishing  a  pan-European  HPC  infrastructure  for 
scientific and engineering research accessible by all EU researchers through a single 
review  process  based  on  excellence,  and  the  tiered  structure  for  organizing  HPC 
centres at the European (Tier-0) and national levels (Tier-1, Tier-2).  

•  The  establishment  of  the  European  Platform  on  HPC  (ETP4HPC)  in  2011 
(incorporated  as  an  Association  in  2012)  and  the  establishment  of  the  contractual 
Public-Private  Partnership  (cPPP)43  on  HPC  with  the  European  Commission  in 
Horizon  2020,  complementing  the  efforts  started  in  FP7  to  support  R&D  and  other 
activities towards exascale (e.g. Mont-Blanc, DEEP, CRESTA, EESI, etc.).  

•  Pre-Commercial  Procurements  (PCP)  at  European  level  (PRACE-3IP  and  Human 
Brain  Project)  and  plans  for  further  procurements  for  innovation  (PPIs)  in  Horizon 
2020 (from 2016).  

•  The establishment of the ECSEL Joint Undertaking,44 aiming to the development of a 
strong  and  globally  competitive  electronics  components  and  systems  industry  in  the 
European Union. 

Today, the European HPC ecosystem is a vibrant mix of national, regional and pan-European 
initiatives,  augmented  by  European  participation  in  international  HPC-supported  scientific 
collaborations  that  extend  far  beyond  Europe—notably  the  Intergovernmental  Panel  on 
Climate Change (IPCC), ITER, and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. The support 
of HPC is fundamental in several European large projects such as the Large Hadron Collider 
at  CERN  (Europe  has  become  the  centre  of  the  global  ecosystem  for  particle  physics 
research), and the Human Brain FET flagship initiative (with the potential to establish Europe 
similarly  as  the  hub  of  global  brain  research).  HPC  is  already  contributing  to  advanced 
research on Graphene, the focus of another EU FET flagship initiative. 

With a differentiated strategy and sufficient investment and political will, Europe can be 
a global player in HPC: There are areas where Europe has weaknesses (e.g. hardware and 
large  integrators/vendors),  but  it  must  exploit  its  strong  assets  in  order  to  get  European 
industry back in the computing scene as technology leading-edge supplier:   

•  Europe  has  the  technical,  human-skills  and  world-leading  capabilities  in  critical 
technologies  for  the  next  generation  of  exascale  computing  such  as  power-efficient 
nanoelectronics, interconnects and processor designs; 

•  Europe has a strong position in parallel software development and global leadership in 

HPC applications;  

•  Technological  disruptions  that  can  change  the  current  HPC  landscape  should  be 
followed closely, in order to spot new opportunities for new technologies developed in 

42 PRACE, Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe 
43  https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/high-performance-computing-contractual-public-private-partnership-hpc-cppp 
44 http://www.ecsel-ju.eu/web/index.php 

21

 
 
                                                 
Europe  -  in  particular,  synergies  must  be  exploited  with  other  IT  developments  like 
e.g. micro/nanoelectronics (ECSEL). 

The European strategy has to take advantage of these strengths and overcome the weaknesses 
with an approach aimed at technologies with a market potential large enough for a sustainable 
development, rather than focusing on "one of a kind" machines. The goal is to leverage on 
technologies  in  the  computing  continuum,  from  smart  phones  to  embedded  systems  to 
servers, feeding the broader ICT in the longer run with IP produced in the EU.  

The  key  for  this  approach  is  the  co-design,  choosing  and  developing  technologies  that 
really fit the needs of important applications and the users of such technology. This will 
facilitate  the  take-up  of  products  and  systems  based  on  European  IP.  Finally,  the  synergies 
between  HPC,  big  data  and  Clouds  have  to  be  exploited  to  create  an  HPC  ecosystem 
favouring  innovation  and  with  economy  of  scale  –for  example,  creating  a  favourable 
environment for SMEs with new access methods to HPC resources, software and tools. 

Base-line data for the HPC market in Europe: HPC spending 

Note: The following data is based in the IDC study.Error!  Bookmark  not  defined. “EU" represents the 28 
Member  States  of  the  European  Union.  “EU+”  represents  the  28  Member  States,  plus  Norway  and 
Switzerland. Figures for the years up to and including 2013 are historical unless specified otherwise.  
Figures  for  2014  and  beyond  are  forecast  numbers  unless  otherwise  specified.  Finally,  the  term 
“revenue” in the titles of the tables is synonymous with spending.  

The EU has the largest GDP in the world but investments in HPC are much lower than 
the  U.S.A.  Europe  maintains  a  relatively  constant  share  of  around  one-quarter  of  the 
overall spending in all categories of HPC systems.  

For  large  systems  over  €360000,  the  EU  share  of   the  global  market  is  forecast  to 
expand to 30.6% in 2018. However, in the strategically important high-end market of 
systems over €2.25 million , the current situat ion is not very satisfactory. The EU has 
only  one  supercomputer  in  the  top  10  and  three  in  the  top  20  (November  2015), 
dropping  from  peak  4  and  7  systems  respectively  in  2012.  Spending  levels  for  these 
high-end supercomputers are an important measure of HPC leadership. 

On  HPC  supply,  U.S.A.  is  the  absolute  world  leader,  having  the  lion's  share  in  all 
segments  of  the  European  HPC  systems  market.  The  only  sizeable  Europe-based 
vendor, Atos (formerly Bull) is under 5%, with a peak market share in 2011. 

Europe  is  strong  in  parallel  software  development  and  a  global  leader  in  exploiting 
HPC for innovation. The European share of the worldwide commercial HPC software 
market closely matches its share of global spending in the HPC server market. 

Worldwide, the proportion of sites exploiting cloud computing to address parts of their 
HPC  workloads  is  rising  –helping  the  "democratisation  of  HPC",  especially  as 
advances in virtualization capabilities becoming more efficient and HPC-friendly. 

The convergence of HPC and big data analytics is being driven by HPC users and the 
growing contingent of commercial firms that are adopting HPC solutions to tackle data 
analytics.  Worldwide  and  European  HPC  server  spending  dedicated  to  high 
performance  data  analysis  (HPDA)  will  grow  robustly  (23.5%  CAGR)  in  the  period 
2013–2018 - more than three times the forecasted growth rate of the worldwide HPC 
server market. 

22

 
 
All HPC servers spending 

The EU now has the largest GDP in the world (€13.2 trillion), having  surpassed the GDP of 
the  United  States  (€12.6  trillion) 45.  However,  the  U.S.A.  has  substantially  outspent  the  EU 
(and EU+) region on HPC server systems46 and IDC forecasts that this pattern will continue. 
On  the  spending  (consumption)  side,  the  U.S.A.  will  continue  to  handily  outspend  the 
EU/EU+  and  other  global  regions  at  least  through  2018  (the  end  of  IDC's  current  forecast 
period).  

The EU/EU+ region has slightly increased the worldwide percentage with respect to the 
2009 baseline (from 24-26% to 25-27% in 2013) and has outspent and will continue to 
handily  outspend  China  and  every  global  region  other  than  the  U.S.A.  through  2018. 
Hence,  where  the  entire  HPC  server  market  is  concerned  (all  price  points),  Europe  has 
maintained,  and  is  forecast  to  maintain,  relatively  constant  share  of  slightly  more  than  one-
quarter of global spending. IDC does not foresee these spending patterns changing markedly 
by the year 2020. 

2009 

2013 

2015 

2018 

CAGR  
13-18 

ALL HPC Server Revenue 
by Region (Euros 000) 

North America 

3,141,484  

3,251,811 

3,691,099 

4,350,032 

6.0% 

EMEA 

1,791,362  

2,233,407 

2,588,195 

3,120,377 

6.9% 

** EU Only 

1,526,503  

1,904,746 

2,204,614 

2,670,860 

7.0% 

** EU+ Only 

1,610,838  

2,008,565 

2,324,361 

2,795,167 

6.8% 

Asia/Pacific w/o Japan 

644,286  

1,376,967 

1,411,676 

1,910,513 

6.8% 

** China 

Japan 

254,171  

726,517 

623,716 

853,336 

3.3% 

588,231  

477,577 

540,214 

634,169 

5.8% 

Rest-of-World 

53,359  

75,350 

92,268 

117,646 

9.3% 

Total 

Share 

6,218,722  

7,415,111 

7,717,126 

10,132,736 

6.4% 

North America 

50.5% 

43.9% 

47.8% 

42.9% 

EMEA 

** EU Only 

** EU+ Only 

28.8% 

30.1% 

33.5% 

30.8% 

24.5% 

25.7% 

28.6% 

26.4% 

25.9% 

27.1% 

30.1% 

27.6% 

Asia/Pacific w/o Japan 

10.4% 

18.6% 

18.3% 

18.9% 

** China 

Japan 

4.1% 

9.8% 

8.1% 

8.4% 

9.5% 

6.4% 

7.0% 

6.3% 

Rest-of-World 

0.9% 

1.0% 

1.2% 

1.2% 

Total 

100.0% 

100.0% 

100.0% 

100.0% 

45 International Monetary Fund statistics. 2014 
46 All HPC servers refer to all HPC market categories, from the smallest technical servers to the biggest supercomputers 

23

 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
The HPC market share per segment: systems over €360000 

The  EU/EU+  market  share  evolution  has  been  much  stronger  in  the  segment  of  the  HPC 
server  market  that  is  more  important  for  scientific  and  industrial  computing  leadership—
supercomputers  priced  at  over  €360000.    In  this  strategic  segment,  the  EU/EU+  share  of 
the global market grew robustly from 21.8-23.0% in 2009 to 27.1-28.5% in 2013 and are 
forecast to expand to 30.6-31.8% in 2018. 

The HPC market share per segment: systems over €2.25 million 

Supercomputers sold for €2.25 million and up ar e the most important class for advanced 
scientific and engineering work. These supercomputers are a high-end subset of the overall 
Supercomputers category discussed in the prior section. Spending levels for these high-end 
supercomputers  are  therefore  also  an  important  measure  of  HPC  leadership.  When 
considering  these  findings,  it  is  important  to  note  that  spending  in  this  small  but 
strategically important high-end market can vary greatly from year to year, because it 
is driven by a small number of large financial transactions that are subject to non-annual, 
cyclical renewals.  

 The  EU  has  only  one  supercomputer  in  the  top  10  and 
three in the top 20 (November 2015), dropping from a peak 
4 and 7 systems in 2012. Spending increased substantially in 
the  EU/EU+  for  large  supercomputers  from  2009  to  2012 
thanks  mainly  to  the  PRACE  procurements  (112  million 
euros  in  2009,  to  658  million  in  2012),  but  then  declined 
(down  to  362  million  euros  in  2014).  In  the  period  2009-
2014, worldwide spending on large supercomputers grew by 
25.9%  to  reach  €1.2  billion.  Growth  for  specific  regions 
often varied greatly from year to year. 2012 was an atypically 
strong  year,  owing  especially 
to  several  major  new 
installations  in  Europe,  China  and  Japan,  the  largest  of  which  (Japan's  K  supercomputer 
and  China's  Tianhe  2  system)  alone  added  €400  million  and  €237  million  in  spending, 
respectively.   

Top 10  Top 20 
# EU 
 Systems 
1 
1 
2 
4 
1 
1 

# EU 
Systems
3 
7 
6 
7 
2 
4 

2015 
2014 
2013 
2012 
2011 
2010 

The Rest of the HPC Ecosystem: Beyond the HPC Servers 

Regarding  the  HPC  overall  budget  (server  systems,  storage,  middleware,  applications 
software,  and  service),  computer  hardware  remains  the  largest  item  in  the  HPC  budget.  
During  the  period  2009-2013,  European  spendingError!  Bookmark  not  defined.  for  the  HPC 
ecosystem  grew  24.4%,  from  3.07  in  2009  to  reach  €3.8  billion,  or  26.1%  of  the 
worldwide HPC ecosystem spending (€14.6 billion) . Spending on HPC servers represented 
49.8% of that total. 

IDC  forecasts  that  European  HPC  ecosystem  spending  will  increase  by  37.8%  (6.6% 
CAGR)  to  reach  about  €5.2  billion  in  2018,  or  24.9%  of  worldwide   HPC  ecosystem 
spending (€21.3 billion). 

HPC supply in Europe 

24

 
 
 
 
 
U.S.A.  vendors  represented  89.6%  of  all  European  (EU+)  HPC  server  system 
revenue/spending  in  2009  and  81.2%  in  2014.  The  only  sizeable  Europe-based  vendor, 
Atos  (formerly  Bull),  accounted  for  1.7%  of  spending  in  2009  and  2.0%  in  2014.  In  its 
largest  revenue  year  during  this  period,  2011,  however,  Atos/Bull  captured  9.7%  of 
European HPC server system revenue. U.S.A. HPC system vendors have the lion's share of 
the European market today, but Atos' acquisition of Bull may create a stronger competitor 
for U.S.A. (and other non-European) HPC vendors over a longer period. 

Market share for U.S.A. vendors declined slightly from 95.0% in 2009 to 93.2% in 2014 in 
the more strategic supercomputer category (HPC systems sold for €360000 or more).  IBM 
and HP were the strong leaders in this segment. Atos/Bull market share grew slightly from 
4.2% in 2009 to 4.5% in 2014, but had a peak of 18.6% market share in 2011.  

Regarding  the  strategic  category  of  high-end  supercomputers  (sold  for  €2.25  million  or 
more) during the historical period 2009-2014, U.S.A. vendors captured 86.9% of European 
revenue in this category in 2009 and 96.7% in 2013 (the most recent year for which IDC 
had  European  revenue  figures  for  this  category).    In  2009,  revenue  for  IBM  alone 
accounted  for  66.7%  of  European  revenues,  while  Atos/Bull  had  a  4.58%.  In  2014, 
combined revenue for IBM and HP represented 58.9% of European revenue. Cray had an 
exceptionally strong 2014 in Europe and accounted for 39.2% of revenue in this high-end 
category.  In  2011,  Atos/Bull  had  an  exceptional  year  and  captured  20.3%  of  European 
high-end supercomputer revenue, while in 2013 it reduced to 3.33%. 

Application sectors 

In  2014  European  spending  for  HPC  systems  was  distributed  over  the  following  main 
industry/application sectors (according to the IDC split of sectors): 

25

 
 
 
 
 
For the five-year forecast period 2013-2018, IDC predicts that the strongest growth will occur 
in  computer-aided  engineering  (CAE),  which  is  heavily  used  in  the  manufacturing  sector.  
Other predicted fast-growth areas including weather/climate (7.6%), government labs/centres 
(7.6%  CAGR),  chemical  engineering  (7.2%  CAGR),  academia  (7.0%  CAGR)  and 
geosciences (6.9% CAGR). Geosciences use today is primarily related to "upstream" oil and 
gas exploration and will secondarily for alternative energy research. The largest segments for 
EU  HPC  spending  in  2018  will  be,  sequentially,  government  labs/centres,  academia,  CAE, 
bio-sciences, and geosciences. 

Other elements in the HPC ecosystem   

Parallel Software 

Europe  is  already  strong  in  important  areas  of  parallel  software  development,  and  a  global 
leader in this area of the supporting Computer Science; some of Europe's best firms are ahead 
of  their  international  competitors  in  exploiting  HPC  for  innovation.  The  worldwide 
commercial  market  for  HPC  softwareError!  Bookmark  not  defined.  was  worth  €4.4  billion  in  2013. 
IDC  estimates  that  the  European  portion  of  global  spending  in  this  market  closely  matched 
Europe's  portion  of  global  spending  in  the  HPC  server  market  (~27%)  and  was  therefore 
worth roughly €1.2 billion in 2013. IDC forecasts that the  worldwide HPC software market 
will expand to about €6.4 billion in 2018 and Euro pean spending in this market will be 
about €1.7 billion . 

Companies  such  as  Allinea  (UK),  Bright  Computing  (Netherlands),  Dassault  Systèmes 
(France),  Schrödinger  (Germany),  and  others  have  demonstrated  that  European  software 
vendors  can  achieve  notable  success  in  both  the  European  and  global  HPC  markets.  IDC 
estimates that European independent software vendors (ISVs) today represent 15-20% of the 
global HPC market for ISV software, and 25-30% of the European market. 

The  situation  regarding  highly  parallel  software  in  Europe  has  not  changed  markedly  since 
2011.47 

•  The vast majority (83%) of the most important parallel software applications in use 
at the  surveyed  European HPC sites  were created  in  Europe. Intellectual property 
rights  for  a  substantial  majority  of  the  sites'  most  important  application  codes 
(66%)  were  exclusively  owned  by  European  organizations.  But  many  of  these 
important codes are used only by one or a handful of HPC sites.  

•  Europe  has  a  number  of  globally  successful  scientific  and  engineering  software 
firms, a larger number of nationally and regionally successful software firms, and is 
strong in many important areas of parallel software development. In addition, great 
strides have been made within initiatives such as CRNS, INRIA, Germany's Special 
Programme on Exascale Computing, and others, as well as within large industrial 
firms such as Daimler, EDF, Airbus, and quite a few others. Where extreme-scale 
software is concerned, however, Europe (like the rest of the world) has been overly 
focused on funding parallel hardware to the detriment of parallel software, and on 
"big science" in comparison with industry.  

47 IDC Study "Financing a Software Infrastructure for Highly Parallelised Codes" 

26

 
 
                                                 
•  Where  funding  has  been  made  available  for  parallel  software  development,  the 
funding typically has been for only a year or two, compared with at least 5-10 years 
of  funding  needed  to  develop  robust,  production-quality  software  that  can  remain 
useful for 10-20 or even 30 years and across multiple generations of HPC hardware 
systems.  

HPC and Clouds  

Worldwide, the proportion of sites exploiting cloud computing to address parts of their HPC 
workloads  rose48  from  13.8%  in  2011  to  23.5%  in  2013,  with  public  and  private  cloud  use 
about equally represented among the 2013 sites. Although European cloud use for HPC was 
not always separable—some clouds are multi-continental or worldwide—it was clear that the 
percentages in Europe closely matched global counterparts.  IDC believes that HPC cloud use 
could double in 2015 from a modest base, especially as advances in virtualization capabilities 
becoming more efficient and HPC-friendly. 

IDC research indicates that currently, HPC usage within public clouds are still best suited for 
highly  parallelized  workloads,  and  accordingly,  such  workload  use  is  seeing  some  of  the 
fastest growth rates within the cloud especially from new or first time commercial HPC users. 
However, there will be a growing emphasis within the cloud service sector to target the HPC 
user base looking to solve more traditional modelling and simulations problems that are not as 
easily  parallelized,  and.  as  a  result,  IDC  expects  to  see  even  more  cloud  centres  offering 
dedicated  HPC  hardware.  Currently,  the  particulars  for  pricing  models  for  these  new  HPC-
centric cloud systems are in flux.   

The  EU  has  an  overall  plan  for  general-purpose  cloud  computing49.  To  move  forwards,  EU 
HPC leadership should embrace cloud-based HPC as an integral element in any HPC-related 
program,  both  for  so-called  capacity  computing  and  for  capability  computing  (as  public 
clouds evolve sufficiently to support more capability computing).  

Cloud-base access, by its very nature, offers the ability for EU HPC leadership to acquire and 
provision  flexible,  on-demand  HPC  cycles  to  a  wide  range  of  potential  users  from 
government,  academia,  and  industry,  in  a  relatively  low  cost  environment  –helping  the 
"democratisation of HPC". Such capabilities will be especially important for potential new 
users and SMEs that are not wholly committed to or technically capable of justifying an in-
house HPC capability, and that can benefit from easy-to-use, on-demand Cloud-access HPC 
services and pay as they use them. 

High-Performance Data Analytics (HPDA) 

Another  important  new  area  for  the  European  HPC  ecosystem  is  high  performance  data 
analysis  (HPDA).  HPDA  is  a  term  to  describe  the  convergence  of  the  established  data-
intensive HPC market and the high-end commercial analytics market that is starting to move 
up to HPC resources. The HPDA market represents the convergence of long-standing, data-
intensive  modelling  and  simulation  methods  in  the  HPC  industry/application  segments,  and 
newer high performance analytics methods that are increasingly employed in these segments 
as well as by commercial organizations that are adopting HPC for the first time. HPDA may 
employ  either  long-standing  numerical  methods,  newer  methods  such  as  large-scale  graph 

48 IDC Worldwide Study of HPC End-User Sites. 2013. 
49 Communication " Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe", COM(2012) 529 final 

27

 
 
                                                 
analytics, semantic technologies, and knowledge discovery algorithms, or some combination 
of long-standing and newer methods.   

HPC  is  used  for  advanced  data  analytics  to  spot  patterns  in  hour-by-hour  weather 
observations  and  domestic  fight  data  to  help  airlines  manage  more  efficiently  the 
scheduling50.  Data  may  be  used  to  build  computer  modelling  software  that  could 
predict the outcome of an infinite number of hypothetical flight and weather scenarios, 
helping airlines spot likely weather delays in advance. That knowledge could enable 
airlines to adjust their schedules to account for weather patterns. It may also lead to 
better communication with travellers and a less stressful flight experience. 

IDC  estimated  the  percentage  of  worldwide  and  European  HPC  server  spending  dedicated  to 
high performance data analysis (HPDA), that is, HPC servers purchased primarily to run data-
intensive simulation or analytics workloads. IDC forecasts that worldwide revenue for HPDA 
servers will grow robustly (23.5% CAGR) during the period 2013–2018, increasing from 
€672 million to abou t €1.9 billion in 2018 . This is more than three times the IDC-forecasted 
growth rate of the worldwide HPC server market as a whole. Europe's share of this HPC-related 
market  is  similar  to  Europe's  share  of  the  HPC  server  system  market  as  a  whole,  about  one-
quarter of the global total.  

HPDA  requirements  are  increasing  in  many  scientific  domains  and  are  driving  more 
commercial companies, including SMEs, to exploit HPC technology for the first time. 67% of 
the HPC sites said48 they use HPC systems for HPDA, and that HPDA use consumes 30% of 
their HPC cycles on average.  The same study found that 23.5% of the HPC sites were using 
cloud computing to address parts of their HPC workloads rose, with public and private cloud 
use about equally represented among the sites. 

 The  convergence  of  HPC  and  big  data  analytics  is  being  driven  by  HPC  users  and  the 
growing  contingent  of  commercial  firms  that  are  adopting  HPC  solutions  to  tackle  data 
analytics  jobs  that  are  too  complex  or  time  critical  for  enterprise  IT  resources  to  handle 
efficiently and cost effectively. In addition: 

•  Within the HPC ranks, HPDA is already becoming mission critical in the government, 
academic,  manufacturing,  energy,  weather/climate,  life  sciences,  and  digital  content 
creation markets — not to mention high frequency trading as an important addition to 
existing HPC-driven financial services applications.  

•  Many  commercial  firms  have  moved  up  to  HPC  for  the  first  time  for  advanced 
business  analytics/business  intelligence,  fraud/error/anomaly  detection,  real-time 
affinity  marketing,  and  other  applications.  Even  though  the  existing  HPC  solutions 
they use may not be explicitly designed to excel at data analytics, it is not unusual for 
these  firms  to  save  $10  million  or  more  per  year  from  upgrading  to  HPC  sold  for  a 
fraction of that amount. 

50 http://hpc-asia.com/big-data-reduce-holiday-flight-delays/ 

28

 
 
 
                                                 
5.  Status of the main objectives towards European Leadership in HPC 

The overall objective of the European HPC strategy is to ensure European leadership in the 
supply  and  use  of  HPC  systems  and  services  by  2020.  In  the  last  few  years  Europe  has 
made impressive progress in areas that are crucial towards this goal, especially organizing 
the European HPC community to pursue HPC leadership on a unified basis, expanding the 
scientific  and  industrial  access  and  use  of  supercomputers,  and  launching  initiatives  to 
strengthen the European HPC supply chain. 

Europe's  standing  as  a  provider  of  high-end  supercomputing  resources  advanced  in  both 
absolute  and  relative  (worldwide)  terms  during  the  period  2010-2015,  but  European 
machines are very few in the strategic group of world top-20 systems. The EU is losing its 
position  in  the  top  supercomputing  league,  and  significant  investments  will  be  needed  for 
pre-exascale systems and exascale systems in the period 2019-2022. 

The  PRACE  peer  review  system  has  enabled  fair  access  to  leading  supercomputer  by 
scientists,  and  more  recently  industrial  engineers,  from  throughout  Europe.  However, 
greater outreach is needed to industry, especially SMEs. 

European  HPC  investments  are  producing  excellent  returns-on-investment  (ROI):  for 
projects that generated financial returns, each euro invested in HPC on average returned 
€867 in increased revenue/income and €69 in profits. 

A substantial R&I programme has been put in place (structured around the cPPP on HPC) 
to take advantage of the European technical capabilities and human skills needed to tackle 
the exascale challenge. However there is still a shortage of qualified HPC job applicants. 

Communication  on  HPC:  Challenges  and  objectives  for  European 
Leadership   

The  Communication  on  HPC  called  on  Member  States,  industry  and  the  scientific 
communities, in cooperation with the Commission, to step up joint efforts to ensure European 
leadership in the supply and use of HPC systems and services by 2020.  

The  Communication  identified  a  number  of  shortcomings  and  challenges  to  reverse  the 
decline of HPC in the EU: 

(a) 

(b) 

The fragmentation of public HPC services across the EU and within Member States. 

The  substantial  underspending  (compared  to  other  regions)  on  acquiring  high-end 
computing systems (only half compared to the U.S.A., at a similar level of GDP47). 

29

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
(c) 

(d) 

(e) 

(f) 

The  low  use  in  the  EU  of  instruments  to  procure  innovative  R&D  for  achieving 
specific technology and systems targets and advance the state-of-the-art of HPC, for 
example Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP), in comparison to the USA.5152 

The difficulty for European HPC vendors to sell their products to the public sector in 
non-EU countries that have national HPC vendors. 

The limited interaction between industry and academia  on the exploitation of  high-
end computing systems, application codes and services, especially regarding the use 
of HPC for  industrial and service innovation. It also reflected the lack  of advanced 
experimental  high-end  computation  facilities  for  industry  and  academia  to  explore 
exascale  technology  options  or  co-design  hardware  and  software  for  specific 
applications.  

The limited workforce with the adequate educational background and well trained in 
HPC  especially  in  parallel  programming  and  the  lack  of  attractive  career  paths  for 
scientists that look after the computational tools and application codes.  

The  Communication  also  identified  four  specific  objectives  towards  ensuring  European 
leadership in the supply and use of HPC systems and services by 2020: 

•  Provide a world-class European HPC infrastructure, benefitting a broad range of academic 
and industry users, and especially SMEs, including a workforce well trained in HPC; 

•  Ensure independent access to HPC technologies, systems and services for the EU; 

•  Establish  a  pan-European  HPC  governance  scheme  to  pool  enlarged  resources  and 
increase  efficiency  including  through  the  strategic  use  of  joint  and  pre-commercial 
procurement;  

•  Ensure the EU's position as a global actor. 

Overall assessment 

An independent study was carried out by IDC during 2014 and 2015 to provide an assessment 
on the progress on the implementation of the European HPC StrategyError!  Bookmark  not  defined.. 
The  study  found  that  overall  in  the  past  5  years  there's  been  a  growing  realization  of  the 
importance of HPC for the competitiveness of European science and industry. The same thing 
has  been  happening  at  the  national  level,  including  the  value  of  collaborating  with  other 
countries. 

Three-quarters  (75.7%)  of  the  European  HPC  stakeholders  participating  in  the 
study —a group including scientific and industrial end-users—believe that Europe's 
overall  HPC  capabilities  have  gotten  stronger  in  the  past  2-3  years.  No  one  thinks 
that the overall capabilities have gotten weaker during this period. 

51COM(2007) 799, Pre-commercial Procurement: Driving innovation to ensure sustainable high quality public services in 
Europe: "The U.S.A. public sector is spending $ 50Bn per year in procurement of R&D, an amount which is 20 times higher 
than in Europe" 
52EURAB report, PREST, 2004, U.S.A. defence R&D spending: an analysis of the impacts 

30

 
 
                                                 
Europe has made impressive progress in areas that are crucial for the goals of the Action Plan, 
especially organizing the European HPC community  to pursue HPC leadership on a unified 
basis, expanding the scientific and industrial access and use of supercomputers, and launching 
initiatives to strengthen the European HPC supply chain.  

Access to a leading-class HPC infrastructure 

Today, the EU has a European-wide HPC awareness, a Europe-wide scheme for categorizing 
HPC  centres,  a  single  peer-review  process  for  accessing  Tier-0  supercomputers,  a 
substantially  larger  number  of  the  world's  top  50  supercomputers,  improved  access  for 
industry  of  all  sizes  (including  SMEs),  and  a  significant  initiative  (the  cPPP  on  HPC)  to 
advance indigenous HPC technologies and applications, among other achievements. Overall, 
the coordination of the different initiatives related to the European HPC strategy has worked 
well, but more needs to be done.   

At  the  very  high  end  of  the  supercomputers  segment,  Europe  has  significantly 
narrowed  the  former  gap  separating  the  most  capable  U.S.A.  and  Japanese 
supercomputers from their European counterparts.  

In  November  2010,  shortly  after  the  founding  of  PRACE,  9  of  the  world's  50  most 
powerful supercomputers53 were located in Europe. In November 2015, the EU hosted 
15  of  the  top  50,  including  the  PRACE  Tier-0  supercomputers.  The  aggregate  peak 
performance  of  the  EU-based  supercomputers  rose  more  than  ten-fold  during  this 
period, from 3.77 petaflops in November 2010 to 45 petaflops in November 2015.  

Clearly,  Europe's  standing  as  a  provider  of  high-end  supercomputing  resources  advanced  in 
both absolute and relative (worldwide) terms during the period 2010-2015. However, the EU 
is losing its position in the top supercomputing league, with only one supercomputer in 
the top 10 and three in the top 20 (November 2015), dropping from a peak 4 and 7 systems 
in 2012. 

The  PRACE  peer  review  system  has  enabled  fair  access  to  leading  supercomputer  by 
scientists, and more recently industrial engineers, from throughout Europe. However, greater 
outreach is needed to industry, especially SMEs. 

ROI on HPC investments 

European HPC investments are producing excellent returns-on-investment (ROI) for science 
and  industry.  Based  on  information  from  143  European  HPC  projects,  for  projects  that 
generated  financial  returns,  each  euro  invested  in  HPC  on  average  returned  €867  in 
increased revenue/income and €69 in profits .  

143  European  HPC  projects  were  included  in  the  IDC  study,  of  which  84  produced 
innovations and 59 produced quantifiable financial returns. The largest average ROI 
gains  per  €1  invested  in  HPC  were  reporte d  by  financial  services  firms  (€1590), 
transportation firms (€1180), and oil/gas companies (€312). 

Academic  projects  averaged  €30  in  cost  savings  per  €1  invested  in  HPC,  and 
industrial  projects  averaged  €75  in  bottom-line  profits  or  costs  savings   per  €1  of 
HPC investment. 

53 Top supercomputers list, http://www.top500.org/lists/2015/06/ 

31

 
 
                                                 
Total  increased  revenue  for  the  59  HPC-enabled,  quantifiable  projects  was  €133.1 
billion, or about €230 million per  project on average. Average increased profits/cost 
savings for all the projects amounted to €69 billion.  

Funding for HPC 

Europe  achieved  healthy  public  sector  HPC  funding  growth  in  2010,  2011  and  2012,  but 
Europe-wide funding declined heavily in 2013 and 2014. On average, the net funding increase 
over the last five-year period was extremely good for pursuing HPC leadership. However, the 
EU  is  losing  its  position  in  the  top  supercomputing  league,  and  significant  investments 
will be needed for pre-exascale systems and exascale systems in the period 2019-2022. 

To  achieve  the  goal  of  HPC  leadership  —meaning  at  minimum  parity  in  HPC  capabilities 
with  the  best  in  the  world,  with  Europe  standing  as  number  one  in  the  world  in  certain 
targeted areas of using HPC —Europe needs to acquire at least one exascale supercomputer in 
the same timeframe as the U.S.A., Japan and China (estimated in 2022). Member States and 
the  European  Commission  should  find  a  way  to  pool  resources  to  amass  the  huge  funding 
needed for the exascale supercomputers. However, the use of joint PCP and PPI for HPC in 
Europe has remained very marginal. 

Independent supply of HPC technology 

There is a substantial R&I programme in place (structured around the cPPP on HPC) to take 
advantage  of  the  European  technical  capabilities  and  human  skills  needed  to  tackle  the 
exascale  challenge,  i.e.  to  develop  native  capabilities  that  cover  the  whole  technology 
spectrum  from  processor  architectures  to  applications.  There  are  particular  strengths  in 
applications, low-power computing, systems and integration that can be leveraged to engage 
successfully  in  this  global  race,  getting  the  EU  back  on  the  world  scene  as  a  leading-edge 
technology supplier. 

The protective barriers in the U.S.A., Japanese and Chinese HPC markets for European HPC 
suppliers are still in place –by contrast, the EU is the most open market both for commercial 
and  government  procurements.  These  market  asymmetries  should  be  addressed  at  a 
government-to-government level, preferably by the European Commission.  

HPC skills 

There is still a shortage of qualified HPC job applicants. HPC competency is rarely required 
in university scientific and engineering curricula in Europe. Students should be made aware 
from an early age of attractive, rewarding HPC careers.  

32

 
 
 
Providing  a  world-class  European  HPC 
workforce well trained in HPC 

infrastructure, 

including  a 

PRACE  has  been  instrumental  in  the  successful  establishment  of  a  world-class  HPC 
infrastructure in Europe. PRACE initiatives to provide European industry with access are 
showing initial success, but there is a need for greater outreach to industry.  

A bigger effort is needed to reduce the current fragmentation of the computing and data 
infrastructures  in  Europe  in  Europe.  The  important  trend  of  convergence  of  HPC,  Big 
Data and Clouds, and the increasing costs of building and maintaining communication, 
computing  and  data  infrastructures  requires  a  stronger  governance  at  European  level 
and  the  rationalisation  of  HPC  resources  as  an  integral  part  of  the  innovation 
infrastructure of the future European Science Cloud. 

Growth  in  HPC  supply  and  use  is  increasingly  limited  by  the  shortage  of  qualified 
personnel,  and  current  efforts  in  providing  HPC  skills  (PRACE  is  a  particularly  active 
player)  are  not  sufficient  –  especially  in  light  of  the  challenges  needed  to  harness  the 
potential of petascale and exascale computers. 

The first specific objective "Provide a world-class European HPC infrastructure, benefitting a 
broad range of academic and industry users, and especially SMEs, including a workforce well 
trained in HPC" has shown a strong progress in purchasing, installing and putting into use 
large HPC systems across Europe.  

The  importance  of  such  an  infrastructure  (in  particular  referring  to  PRACE)  has  been 
supported by Council conclusions in several occasions (December 200954, May 201055, May 
20132  and  May  201556).  The  Council  invited  Member  States  to  have  more  coordinated 
investments  in  HPC  and  the  Commission  to  propose  financial  incentives  for  jointly 
developing and sharing research infrastructures in exascale computing, and on Member States 
and  the  Commission  to  pool  their  investments  in  HPC  under  PRACE.  The  Council  also 
stressed  the  need  to  maintain  the  PRACE  approach  in  pooling  leadership-class  computing 
systems and making them available to all researchers in the EU and associated countries, on 
the basis of, and in order to enhance, scientific excellence and innovation. In relation to these 
developments,  the  U.S.A.  administration  recently  issued  a  presidential  executive  order  to 
create a coordinated Federal strategy in HPC research, development and deployment.34 

In the period 2010-2014, Member States funded Tier-0, Tier-1 and Tier-2 systems at a very 
healthy  level:  Europe's  overall  HPC  capabilities  in  the  most  powerful  supercomputers,  and 
largely through the PRACE program, Europe has narrowed the former wide gap detected in 
2009  separating  the  most  capable  U.S.A.  and  Japanese  supercomputers  (and  now  Chinese) 
from their European counterparts. European Commission supported and keeps supporting the 
implementation of PRACE (for activities such the peer review system, training, seminars, and 
some prototyping procurements including a PCP). Strong investment progress was also made 
in two primary research areas that rely substantially on HPC, for example in the Human Brain 
Project (HPB).  

54 Competitiveness Council 8 December 2009, Doc. 17190/09  
55 Competitiveness Council 17 May 2010, Doc. 9451/10 
56 Competitiveness Council  29 May 2015, Doc. 9360/15 

33

 
 
                                                 
However,  in  HPC  there  is  no  European-level  coordination  of  the  HPC  policies  of  Member 
States.  A bigger effort is needed to reduce the current  fragmentation of  the  computing 
and data infrastructures in Europe. The important trend of convergence of HPC, Big Data 
and Clouds, and the increasing costs of building and maintaining communication, computing 
and  data  infrastructures  (sometimes  duplicating  the  efforts  and  resources),  requires  a 
stronger  governance  at  European  level  and  the  rationalisation  of  HPC  resources 
(coordinating and federating the existing HPC resources Tier-0, Tier-1 and Tier-2) as an 
integral part of the innovation infrastructure of the future European Science Cloud. 

PRACE 

Following the creation of the PRACE legal entity in 2010 (for a period ending in mid-2015), 
four Member States pooled some of their academic leadership-class computing systems as a 
single  infrastructure  and  made  them  available  to  all  researchers  in  the  EU.  Critical  mass  is 
achieved  and  access  to  these  top-of-the-range  HPC  systems  is  provided  on  the  basis  of 
scientific excellence rather than the geographical location of a researcher. PRACE is further 
extending its services to mid-range HPC systems with the objective of providing a distributed 
computing platform that serves its users irrespective of their location and the availability of 
national resources.  The PRACE  model  of  pooling  and  sharing  systems  and  expertise  makes 
optimal use of the limited resources available.  

For  the  PRACE  1.0  period  (2010  –  mid  2015),  the  four  hosting  members—Spain  (BCS), 
Germany  (GCS),  France  (GENCI)  and  Italy  (CINECA)  each  pledged  to  contribute  €100 
million,  for  a  total  pledge  of  €400  million.  So me  of  the  commitment  involves  not  cash 
investment  in  acquiring  supercomputers,  but  in-kind  contributions,  such  as  supercomputing 
cycles, operating expenses and personnel time. As of today, three of the four hosting members 
have been given extensions until early 2016 to complete the full amounts of their PRACE 1.0 
commitments.  The  actual  total  contributions  to  date  from  the  hosting  members  can  be 
estimated in the range of €250 million to €300 mi
llion. Discussions are being held by Member 
States for a possible extension of PRACE into "PRACE 2.0". However, the level of funding 
or the financing scheme for PRACE 2.0 has not been settled yet at this moment in time (an 
agreement is expected in the first quarter of 2016). 

The PRACE project partners received in FP7 EC funding under the PRACE Preparatory and 
Implementation  Phase  Projects  (PRACE-1IP  (2010-2012),  PRACE-2IP  (2011-2013), 
PRACE-3IP (2012-2014)) for a total of €67 m illion, complemented by the consortium budget 
of over €43 million. 57   The  EC  funds  covered activities such as the peer-review process for 
access to PRACE supercomputers, training, prototyping, application tuning and a helpdesk. 

The main achievements of PRACE regarding access to infrastructure can be summarised as 
follows: 

•  25 members, including 4 Hosting Members (France, Germany, Italy, Spain); 

•  18 Pflop/s of peak performance on 6 world-class systems; 

•  10.7  thousand  million  core  hours  awarded  since  2010  with  peer  review,  the  main 

criterion is scientific excellence; access free at the point of usage; 

57 "PRACE Research Infrastructure." http://www.prace-ri.eu/prace-in-a-few-words/ 

34

 
 
                                                 
•  394 scientific projects enabled 

•  ~5000 people trained by the PRACE Advanced Training Centres and other events; 

• 

increasing  trend  in  all  types  of  scientific  production  supported  by  PRACE:  158  PhD 
theses,  507  publications  and  719  scientific  talks  supported,  and  two  patents  filed  from 
PRACE-supported projects  

•  Open R&D access for industrial users with >50 companies supported, with more than 
318  million  CPU  hours  awarded,  (309  million  on  Tier-0  supercomputers),  including 
nearly 1.8 million CPU hours for SMEs in the SHAPE programme 

•  21  SMEs  participated  in  the  SHAPE  pilot  for  SME  access;  PRACE  reports  10  success 
stories  of  SMEs58  from  6  different  countries  benefiting  from  PRACE  HPC  and  know-
how in the PRACE centres 

PRACE supercomputing power has allowed astounding scientific advances in Europe. 
An  international  team  led  by  the  Max  Planck  Institute  for  Astrophysics  in  Garching 
(Germany), used a PRACE-allocation of 20 million core hours on the French Tier-0 
system  CURIE  to  simulate  the  entire  known  Universe  from  its  birth  to  present  day, 
including  the  “web”  of  spiral  and  disc-galaxies59.  The  results  of  this  research  were 
published on 7 May 2014 in edition #509 of Nature. 

In the field of medicine and life-sciences, a project led by University College London 
used 25 million core hours on the German Tier-0 SuperMUC to understand how the 
protein  involved  in  cell  division  (kinase)  is  activated60,  opening  the  door  to  future 
cancer treatments by regulating this activation with tailor-made drugs. The simulation 
of free energy methods and the running of multiple replicas on hundreds of processors 
are so complex that can only by carried out by a system with petascale performance.  

European high-end supercomputers are regularly oversubscribed—the demand for computing 
cycles typically exceeds the supply by a factor of two to three.  It is therefore safe to assume 
that the 10-fold increase in capacity among Europe's largest supercomputers in the last 5 years 
is  almost  fully  utilized  today  (this  is  confirmed  by  utilization  data  reported  by  the  centres 
hosting  these  supercomputers).  The  use  of  PRACE  supercomputers  has  also  been 
substantially democratized through the single peer review process that makes access available 
on an equitable basis to scientists from throughout Europe.  

PRACE initiatives to provide European industry with access are newer and are showing initial 
success, but there is a need for greater outreach to industry.  

HPC training and skills 

HPC  advances  for  scientific  progress,  industrial  competitiveness,  national  security,  and  the 
quality  of  human  life,  are  unattainable  without  an  adequate  number  of  properly  trained 
including  computational  scientists,  programmers,  system  administrators, 
personnel, 
technologists and all the others who help make up the HPC ecosystem. Growth in HPC supply 
and use is increasingly limited by the shortage of qualified personnel.  

58 http://www.prace-ri.eu/success-stories 
59 http://www.prace-ri.eu/cosmic-simulation-pr/ 
60 http://www.prace-project.eu/IMG/pdf/science_slides_10.pdf 

35

 
 
                                                 
There is a world-wide serious shortage of qualified candidates for HPC positions today61, and 
Europe  is  no  exception.  The  number  of  university  programs  in  computational  science  and 
related fields plummeted during the late 90's, as did HPC-related internship and postgraduate 
fellowship  opportunities.  Young  people  who  might  have  chosen  an  HPC  career  a  decade 
earlier  all  too  often  opted  instead  for  employment  with  "new  technology"  Internet,  PC  or 
gaming  companies.  As  a  result,  a  high  proportion  of  today's  "greying"  HPC  workforce  is 
within a decade of retirement age and educational institutions are not producing enough HPC-
trained graduates to replace them. 

The HPC community has only begun to address this labour shortage through new curricular 
and internship offerings, as well as through accelerated on-the-job training, but there is still a 
long  way  to  go  –  especially  in  light  of  the  challenges  needed  to  harness  the  potential  of 
petascale and exascale computers.  

The  job  categories  that  HPC  centres  consider  hardest  to  find  are  scientists  with  HPC 
capabilities, parallel programmers, algorithm developers, and system administrator with high-
end  computing  experience.  The  skills  most  badly  needed  today  include  a  combined 
understanding  of  a  scientific  discipline  and  computational  science  and/or  computer  science; 
parallel  programming  and  code  optimisation,  especially  for  scaling  to  large  processor/core 
counts; algorithm development; and understanding of parallel file systems. 

At  European  level,  one  of  the  most  outstanding  achievements  of  PRACE  is  the  PRACE 
training  activities  (PRACE  training  events  and  the  PRACE  Advanced  Training  Centres 
(PATCs)).  The  PRACE  Training  Portal62  is  a  complete  entry  point  to  promoting  training 
opportunities with very wide information on courses and leading-class tutorials and training 
material. 

•  ~5000 people have been trained by the PRACE Advanced Training Centres and other 

events. 

•  There is an increasing trend in all types of scientific production supported by PRACE: 158 
PhD  theses,  507  publications  and  719  scientific  talks  supported,  and  two  patents  filed 
from PRACE-supported projects. 

61 A Study of the Talent and Skill Set Issues Impacting HPC Data Centers. IDC worldwide study conducted for the U.S.A. 
Department of Energy. July 2010. 
62 http://www.training.prace-ri.eu/ 

36

 
 
                                                 
Ensure  independent  access  to  HPC  technologies,  systems  and  services  for 
the EU 

Europe  cannot  be  a  mere  buyer  dependent  on  other  regions  to  access  the  key  HPC 
technology and infrastructure to innovate. HPC's ability to boost scientific, industrial 
and economic competitiveness has led to the conclusion in the leading world nations 
that  this  transformational  technology  is  too  strategic  to  be  outsourced  to  foreign 
sources. Europe's interest in fostering the development of an indigenous HPC supply 
chain is part of this global trend. 

The  EU,  building  on  its  base  of  existing  and  planned  EU-wide  HPC  development 
programs,  is  positioned  to  manage  and  coordinate  a  strong  base  of  both  indigenous 
and  foreign  technology  across  its  commercial  and  government  sectors  to  assemble 
exascale  HPC  capability  that  could,  in  some  critical  application  sectors  achieve 
world-class, if not global leadership, status. 

Mastering  HPC  state-of-the-art  technologies,  not  only  from  the  use  point  of  view,  but  from 
the  development  of  the  whole  know-how  chain  from  hardware,  software,  tools  and 
applications, is recognised as a strategic factor for the nations engaged in the worldwide race 
towards exascale computing. If Europe is a mere buyer dependent on other regions to access 
the  key  computing  technology  and  infrastructure  to  innovate,  the  immense  risk  is  being 
technologically locked or deprived of strategic know-how. For example, the ban on Intel last 
generation processors to China (decided by the U.S.A. government) is a serious blow to the 
Chinese  race  to  exascale  computing  –  but  has  accelerated  the  Chinese  programme  for 
indigenous processors. 

The Council has acknowledged the need to develop the new generation of HPC technologies 
and  has  stressed  the  importance  of  developing  state-of-the-art  HPC  technologies,  systems, 
software,  applications  and  services  in  Europe56.  Maintaining  and  extending  European 
strengths in these areas will support growth, sustainability (green ICT) and competitiveness in 
science,  the  ICT  industry  and  the  economy  in  general.    The  Council  also  stressed  the 
importance of supporting and strengthening the dual role of European industry in HPC, both 
as  supplier  of  state-of-the-art  technologies  and  systems,  and  as  user  of  HPC  to  innovate  in 
products, processes and services.2 

Europe's interest in fostering the development of an indigenous HPC supply chain is part of a 
global  trend.  The  growing  recognition  of  HPC's  ability  to  boost  scientific,  industrial  and 
economic  competitiveness  has  increasingly  led  to  the  conclusion  that  this  transformational 
technology is too strategic to be outsourced to foreign sources. The trend scarcely applies to 
the  U.S.A.,  which  has  long  had  large  domestic  HPC  suppliers  that  dominate  the  global 
market. But in other major geographies, such as Europe, Japan, China and India, the push is 
on to develop strong indigenous HPC supply chains in order to decrease reliance on foreign 
sources,  especially  the  U.S.A.  Even  Japan's  leading  supercomputers,  aimed  mainly  at  the 
Japanese market, employ indigenous RISC processors and other domestic technologies.  

- 

In 2013, about 110,000 HPC systems were sold around the world and more than 90% 
of these systems came from U.S.A. suppliers. In the same year, more than 90% of the 
processors  and  co-processors  powering  HPC  systems  also  came  from  U.S.A. 
suppliers.  

37

 
 
 
-  China today has at least five indigenous processor development initiatives under way, 
most famously the evolving Loongson processor series developed under the auspices 
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). 

-  Japan's  most  powerful  HPC  system,  the  K  Computer,  is  based  on  custom  SPARC 
processors from Fujitsu and NEC continues to develop custom vector processors.  

- 

- 

In  April  2014,  the  Russian  state-sponsored  electronics  company  Ruseelectronics63 
announced that it is developing a petascale supercomputer and "all of its processors 
and components will be designed in Russia."  

India  has  also  signalled  its  intent  to  continue  supporting  the  development  of  Param 
and  other  domestic  technologies  (this  programme  was  started  after  an  embargo  on 
Cray supercomputers) 

There  is  therefore  a  clear  need  to  provide  for  a  European  world-class  industrial  supply 
capability.  

Europe  has  all  the  technical  capabilities  and  human  skills  needed  to  tackle  the  exascale 
challenge, i.e. to develop native capabilities that cover the whole technology spectrum from 
processor  architectures  to  applications64.  Even  though  the  EU  is  currently  weak  in  terms  of 
HPC  system  vendors  compared  to  the  U.S.A.,  there  are  particular  strengths  in  applications, 
low-power computing, systems and integration that can be leveraged to engage successfully in 
this  global  race,  getting  the  EU  back  on  the  world  scene  as  a  leading-edge  technology 
supplier.   

The  situation  in  the  European  HPC  supply  landscape  has  significantly  changed  since  the 
establishment  of  the  European  Technology  Platform  for  HPC  (ETP4HPC)65  in  2011 
(incorporated as an Association in 2012). ETP4HPC is an association of European suppliers 
and dedicated to advancing European HPC technologies and Europe's HPC supply chain. The 
European  Commission  has  established  a  cPPP  on  HPC  in  partnership  with  the  ETP4HPC's, 
with €700 million of EC contribution pledged 
in Horizon 2020 and matching funds from the 
private side. ETP4HPC has defined "European supplier" as any supplier that performs R&D 
in Europe, no matter where in the world the supplier is headquartered. This definition allows 
European  scientists  and  engineers,  as  well  as  Europe-based  suppliers,  to  benefit  from  R&D 
collaborations that may also involve suppliers not based in Europe.  

ETP4HPC's  strategy  is  well  conceived  to  support  the  goals  of  European  scientific  and 
engineering leadership, aiming at including European IP in a wide range of technologies and 
focusing  on  sustainable  technologies  rather  than  on  "one-of-a-kind"  systems.  The  stated 
"tactics" of the platform66 are the following: 

•  Building on existing strengths; 

•  Analysing  disruptions  that  can  change  the  current  HPC  landscape  and  facilitate 

introduction of new technologies developed in Europe; 

63 http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/04/11/russian-bred-supercomputer-works/ 
64 HPC expert consultation meetings for the European Commission in September 2010 and March 2011 
65 http://www.etp4hpc.eu/ 
66 http://www.etp4hpc.eu/strategy/tactics/ 

38

 
 
                                                 
•  Selecting  technologies  with  a  market  potential  large  enough  for  a  sustainable 

development; 

•  Choosing technologies fitting the needs of important applications; 

•  Creating  a  favourable  environment  for  SMEs  (creation  of  start-ups  and  development 

of existing SMEs); 

•  Using synergies with other IT market technologies. 

Ultimately the EU, building on its base of existing and planned EU-wide HPC development 
programs,  is  positioned  to  manage  and  coordinate  a  strong  base  of  both  indigenous  and 
foreign technology across its commercial and government sectors to assemble exascale HPC 
capability  that  could,  in  some  critical  application  sectors  achieve  world-class,  if  not 
global leadership, status. 

HPC supply components 

Hardware  (processors,  storage,  interconnects):  the  market  situation  has  not  significantly 
changed since 2009 regarding hardware, i.e. technologies from Europe-based suppliers today 
have a very small share and presence in HPC across Europe. Only 54% of survey respondents 
believe that Europe's ability to develop HPC hardware has gotten stronger or stayed about the 
same. U.S.A. manufacturers (i.e. Intel processors and coprocessors/accelerators from Intel and 
Nvidia) will continue to dominate the European and global HPC markets for at least the next 
five  years  (2020).  However,  processors  based  on  low-power  designs  from  UK-based  ARM 
Holdings  will  establish  a  modest  but  expanding  presence  in  the  market  during  the  period 
2015-2020,  and  progressively  ARM  designs  will  be  incorporated  into  the  HPC  systems  of 
non-European as well as European vendors.  

On  storage,  Xyratec  (now  part  of  Seagate)  is  an  indigenous  HPC  storage  developer,  and 
Europe  has  several  important  innovative  interconnect  suppliers  like  EXTOLL  (Germany) 
and Numascale (Norway), and Atos (Bull) is developing a high-capability interconnect. These 
will  compete  in  the  European  and  global  market  with  the  current  world  leader  Mellanox 
(Israel-U.S.)  and  interconnects  from  Intel,  among  others.  European  vendors  Atos  and 
EXTOLL  are  positioned  to  begin  capturing  interconnect  market  share  over  time,  starting  in 
the European HPC market.  

Software:  Europe  has  world-class  strengths  in  highly  parallel  software.  Advances  in 
parallel  software  will  become  even  more  important  than  e.g.  hardware  performance  for  the 
coming  era  of  exascale  computing.  Software  is  considered  as  one  of  the  most  critical 
aspects, because the ability to exploit future-generation (including exascale) supercomputers 
for  science  and  industry  will  depend  heavily  on  software  capabilities.  This  is  because  the 
capabilities of the hardware systems have gotten far ahead of the ability of software to exploit 
them efficiently (or of interconnects to keep processors busy with data). 

Today,  only  about  1%  of  HPC  application  codes  can  exploit  10,000  or  more 
processor  cores.  Yet,  the  largest  HPC  hardware  systems  today  contain  more  than  1 
million cores, and exascale supercomputers with tens or hundreds of millions of cores 
will begin to arrive during the period 2020-2022. 

39

 
 
A  substantial  majority  of  European  respondents  to  the  IDC  study  consistently  stated 
that  developing  software  is  a  demonstrated  strength  of  Europe's  HPC  community. 
54.0%  believe  Europe's  ability  to  develop  HPC  software  has  become  ""somewhat 
stronger (45.9%) or "much stronger" (8.1%). 35.1% think that this ability has "stayed 
about  the  same."  Only  8.1%  believe  that  Europe  has  gotten  "somewhat  weaker"  in 
developing HPC software. 

The  vast  majority  (83%)  of  the  most  important  parallel  software  applications  in  use  at  the 
surveyed  European  HPC  sites  were  created  in  Europe47.  Intellectual  property  rights  for  a 
substantial  majority  of  the  sites'  most  important  application  codes  (66%)  were  exclusively 
owned by European organizations. But many of these important codes are used only by one or 
a handful of HPC sites. Hence, there is a major opportunity for commercialization and further 
dissemination of parallel software codes already in use in Europe.  

The de-emphasizing of funding for exascale software development by the U.S.A. government 
has created an opportunity for Europe to gain an important advantage in the global race. Some 
European software companies are highly successful in Europe and across the world, but their 
number  is  small.  EU-based  companies,  including  Dassault  Systemes,  Bright  Computing, 
Allinea  and  others,  have  had  notable  success  in  selling  their  software  products  into  the 
European  and  worldwide  HPC  markets,  including  the  U.S.A.  The  size  and  maturity  of  the 
U.S.A.  HPC  market,  along  with  tax  and  market  access  considerations,  often  motivate 
European software firms to establish dual headquarters in Europe and the U.S. 

Establish a pan-European HPC governance scheme  

The  importance  of  pooling  and  optimising  European  investments  in  world-class  HPC 
infrastructure under PRACE is well recognised. The establishment of PRACE was a first 
step  in  the  right  direction,  however  it  has not  yet  provided  the  adequate  governance  for 
the necessary European-level coordination of the HPC policies of Member States.  

In a wider context, the current governance of European e-infrastructures (including HPC) 
is not suitable to tackle the emerging trend of the HPC, Big Data and Cloud convergence 
and  the  growing  needs  to  coordinate  and  federate  at  European  level  the  different  e-
infrastructures  as  part  of  a  European  Science  Cloud,  matching  the  needs  of  the 
researchers and research infrastructures. 

The  achievement  of  the  European  HPC  leadership  requires  adequate  governance  for  setting 
concrete objectives, deciding policies, monitoring progress and efficiently pooling and using 
resources  available  across  the  Member  States.  The  development  of  HPC  has  long  been  a 
national affair for Member States, often driven by military and nuclear energy applications.  

The increasing importance of HPC for researchers and industry, as well as the exponential rise 
in  the  investments  required  to  stay  competitive  at  world  level,  have  led  to  a  common 
understanding that ‘Europeanisation’ of this domain would benefit everyone. This is also true 
for those Member States which encounter difficulties in creating self-sufficient national HPC 
infrastructures  whereas  they  can  make  valuable  contributions  to  and  benefit  from  EU-level 
HPC capabilities. The European Commission has advanced the HPC strategy by coordinating 
with the efforts of multiple initiatives and stakeholders, including the Member States through 
PRACE, and ETP4HPC.  

40

 
 
 
 
The  importance  of  pooling  and  optimising  European  investments  in  world-class  HPC 
infrastructure  under  PRACE  has  been  recognised  by  the  Council54,  inviting  the  Member 
States  and  the  Commission  to  exchange  and  to  share  priorities  and  plans  for  HPC 
development,  in  association  with PRACE and the  European Technology Platform  on HPC2. 
The  establishment  of  PRACE  has  not  however  provided  the  adequate  governance  for  the 
necessary the European-level coordination of the HPC policies of Member States. 

The  need  for  an  EU-level  policy  is  increasingly  accepted,  an  in  the  May  2015 
Competitiveness  Council,  ESFRI  (European  Strategic  Forum  on  Research  Infrastructures) 
was  invited  to  explore  mechanisms  for  better  coordination  of  Member  States'  investment 
strategies  in  e-infrastructures,  including  HPC56.  The  current  governance  of  European  e-
infrastructures (including HPC) is not suitable to tackle the emerging trend of the HPC, 
Big  Data  and  Cloud  convergence  and  the  growing  needs  to  coordinate  and  federate  at 
European  level  the  different  e-infrastructures  (e.g.  HPC,  distributed  computing,  data)  as 
part  of  an  European  Science  Cloud,  matching  the  needs  of  the  researchers  and  research 
infrastructures (e.g. in terms of data production).  

Ensure the EU's position as a global actor 

No single Member State will have the financial resources to acquire exascale computing 
capabilities and develop the necessary HPC ecosystem on its own in the same time frame 
as the U.S.A., Japan or China.  

Instruments to pool and coordinate resources from different Member States are still 
underutilised in Europe today. 

The global economies investing in HPC will gain the greatest competitive advantage and reap 
the largest economic benefits. No single Member State will have the financial resources to 
reach the exascale generation on its own in the same time frame as the U.S.A., Japan or 
China, i.e. acquiring exascale capabilities and developing the necessary HPC ecosystem. As 
outlined in the HPC Communication, pooling of resources at EU level is needed.  

However, regarding the pooling of resources, there is no central procurement agent in Europe 
with the financial ability and motivation to exploit Pre-commercial procurement (PCP), public 
procurement  of  innovative  solutions  (PPI)  or  related  mechanisms  on  behalf  of  Europe  in  a 
coordinated way, as needed to compete at the same level with U.S.A., China and Japan.  

The  cost  of  buying  one  machine  in  the  highest  performance  range  is  currently 
estimated  in  the  order  of  €100  –  €150  million.  In  addition,
  to  ensure  independent 
access to state-of-the-art HPC technologies, a minimum of €50-100 million per year 
are needed for just the system development of one exascale machine. This figure will 
ramp-up if the operation costs, the ecosystem of developers and the effort to exascale 
the codes and applications in use by industry and academia are taken into account. 

Similarly  to  the  situation  detected  in  2009,  PCP  and  PPI  are  still  underutilised  in  Europe 
today. PCP and PPI are key mechanisms used by the governments of the United States, China 
and  Japan  (Europe's  main  rivals  for  HPC  leadership)  to  drive  commercial  competitive 
advantage  and  to  advance  suppliers  of  indigenous  technologies.  Member  States  conduct 
procurements, but with rare exceptions they have not used PCP and PPI mechanisms in the 
HPC  domain.  The  Commission  has  encouraged  and  supported  a  limited  number  of  HPC 

41

 
 
  
procurements gathering procurers from different Member States using PCP or PPI, such as the 
PRACE-3IP €9 million PCP for a joint procurem ent and joint ownership of innovative HPC 
prototypes,  focusing  on  high-energy  efficiency  HPC  systems,  and  the  Human  Brain  Project 
€2.6  million  PCP  for  system  components  allowing 
interactive  visualization  and  steering  of 
large-scale brain simulations on high-performance architectures. 

Member  States  are  concerned  primarily  with  their  national  needs  and  do  not  closely 
coordinate or pool financing for their supercomputer procurements. Hence, the status quo will 
make  it  exceedingly  difficult  for  Europe  to  amass  enough  money  to  acquire  pre-scale  and 
exascale supercomputers in competitive timeframes. The current PRACE agreement ended in 
mid-2015  (although  it  has  been  provisionally  extended),  and  discussions  are  being  held  by 
Member States for a possible extension into "PRACE 2.0". However, the level of funding or 
the  financing  scheme  for  PRACE  2.0  has  not  been  settled  yet  at  this  moment  in  time.  The 
anticipated  costs  for  acquiring  and  operating  pre-exascale  and  exascale  supercomputers  will 
require substantially higher funding levels than in PRACE 1.0. 

42

 
 
6.  EC support to HPC in FP7 and Horizon 2020 

The European Commission has significantly increased the support to the implementation 
of the European HPC strategy. In Horizon 2020, this support is structured around three 
axes: developing the next generation of exascale technologies, and achieving excellence in 
HPC  application  delivery  and  use,  and  providing  access  to  world-leading  HPC 
infrastructure. 

A  contractual  Public-Private  Partnership  (cPPP)  on  HPC  was  established  in  2014  with 
the  European  Technology  Platform  on  HPC  (ETP4HPC)  with  €700  million  of  EC 
contribution pledged in Horizon 2020 for implementing the first two implementation axes 
(developing of exascale technologies, and achieving excellence in HPC application). 

For the period 2014-2017, €317 million have alre ady been committed for HPC, including 
€224,4 million in the frame of the cPPP on HPC,
parts  of  the  programme  related  to  the  third  implementation  axis  of  providing  access  to 
world-leading HPC infrastructure. 

 complemented with €93 million in other 

The  European  Commission  has  supported  the  implementation  of  the 
European  HPC  strategy  through  several  activities  in  FP7  and  Horizon 
2020. 

In FP7, the EC contributed €67 million to the PR ACE Preparatory and Implementation Phase 
Projects,  and  nearly  €50  million  more  in  s upport  of  the  technology  development  projects 
towards exascale (e.g. Mont-Blanc, DEEP, CRESTA) and accompanying measures (EESI and 
EESI2)  for  the  definition  of  the  exascale  software  roadmap.  In  the  frame  of  the  ICT 
Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) initiative, €27 million supported the Fortissimo, 
Cloud flow and Cloud SME projects.  

In Horizon 202067, the EC has substantially elevated the planned financing levels for HPC- 
related initiatives. Support to the HPC strategy implementation is structured around three axes 
(along with training, education and skills development):  

(a)  developing the next generation of HPC technologies, applications and systems 

towards exascale;  

(b) 

achieving excellence in HPC application delivery and use (by the establishment 
of Centres of Excellence in HPC applications);  

(c)  providing  access  to  the  best  supercomputing  facilities  and  services  for  both 

industry (including SMEs) and academia (PRACE); 

67 http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/high-performance-computing-hpc 

43

 
 
 
 
                                                 
 
 
Support to (a) and (b): the cPPP on HPC  

In 2014, the EC established in collaboration with the ETP4HPC a contractual Public-Private 
Partnership (cPPP)43 initiative on HPC to tackle axes (a) and (b) above. The EC has pledged 
€700 million in Horizon 2020 and it is expected that the cPPP will leverage a similar amount 
of resources in the private side. The cPPP will contribute to gain independent access to the 
next  generation  of  extreme-performance  computing  technologies  and  at  strengthening  of 
European  leadership  in  today's  and  future  most  innovative  applications  for  science  and 
industry. The cPPP covers these objectives in two main strands: 

•  Advancing  the  development  of  autonomous  technology  and  strengthening  Europe's 
HPC  supply  chain:  Under  the  FET  WP2014-15,  the  EC  committed  €93.4  million  to 
support the development of core technologies and an additional €4 million for ecosystem 
development. Additional €85 million are budge ted in the FET WP2016-2017, covering the 
whole spectrum from processors and system architectures to software stack, programming 
models, algorithms etc.    

•  European excellence in HPC applications: The EC committed €40 million for Centres 
of Excellence (CoE) and €2 million for a Network of HPC competence centres for SMEs 
under the e-infrastructure programme in 2014-2015.  

o  8  Centres  of  Excellence  were  launched  in  2015  for  the  application  of  HPC  in 
scientific or industrial domains that are most important for Europe. The Centres of 
Excellence  will  have  the  critical  task  to  help  Europe  to  advance  in  Europe's 
existing  leadership  in  HPC  applications.  The  CoEs  cover  important  areas  like 
renewable  energy,  materials  modelling  and  design,  molecular  and  atomic 

44

 
 
 
modelling, weather and climate change, Global System science, and bio-molecular 
research, and tools to improve HPC applications performance.  

o  CoEs should further consolidate the EU’s strong position in HPC applications by 
coordinating and stimulating parallel software code development and scaling, and 
by  ensuring  the  availability  of  quality  HPC  software  to  academic  and  industrial 
users.  Another  challenge  for  CoEs  to  address  is  the  skills  gap  in  computational 
science: Centres of Excellence are key to develop skills and expertise needed for 
the coming era of exascale computing. 

Support to (c): PRACE 

PRACE  has  been  instrumental  to  pool  national  and  EU  resources  and  it  is  the  reference  at 
European  level  for  specifying  the  needs  of  the  top-range  supercomputers.  PRACE  made  its 
services  available  to  the  entire  European  research  and  education  community,  and  provided 
training and expertise in HCP (mainly to academic research but also to some industry). This is 
expected to continue in PRACE 2.0 (expected agreement in first quarter 2016), although the 
financial, legal and organisational details have not been disclosed; it is unlikely that PRACE 
will  significantly  extend  its  role,  e.g.  to  carry  out  joint  (pre-commercial)  procurement  for 
leadership-class  systems  or  to  provide  research  and  innovation  services  and  training  to 
industry in a large scale –the usage of the cycles in the PRACE systems are subject to several 
constraints for wide industrial use. 

•  The  fourth  implementation  phase  of  PRACE  received  €15  million  in  2015,  and  €15 

million more are budgeted in the Work Programme 2016-2017.  

•  The EC has also committed €26 million in 2016 -2017 to support a Public Procurement for 
Innovative solutions (PPI) for advanced (sub)systems to be used in the frame of PRACE.  

Other financing commitments related to HPC include the following:  

•  The FET flagship Human Brain Project. The EC plans to contribute €25 million in 2016-

2017 for the advanced HPC platform of the project; 

• 

• 

€10 million have been allocated for Fo rtissimo2 in the I4MS initiative; 

€2  million  have  been  allocated  for  EU-B razil  collaboration  on  HPC  in  the  LEIT 
Workprogramme 2014-15. 

45

 
 
7.  Progress in the implementation of the European HPC strategy Action 

Plan 

Progress of the Action Plan 

The  Action  Plan  for  the  achievement  of  the  HPC  Communication  objectives  sets  out 
recommendations  and  measures  to  be  put  in  place  by  Member  States,  the  Commission  and 
industry and are intended to impact on both the supply and demand of HPC in a synergetic 
manner. These measures are largely complementary to the R&I activities launched in Horizon 
2020. The Action Plan was structured along 6 axes: 

1.  Governance at EU level 

2.  Financial envelope for HPC 

3.  The implementation of funding mechanisms and pooling of resources 

4.  Development of the European HPC eco-system 

5.  Industrial exploitation of HPC 

6.  Ensuring a level-playing field 

1.  Governance at EU level  

The governance in HPC has considerably evolved in the last few years, in particular with the 
establishment of PRACE in 2010 the European Technology Platform for HPC (ETP4HPC) in 
2011. The next step in the strategy is the launch in 2015 of the EXDCI support action with the 
participation  of  PRACE  and  ETP4HPC  to  coordinate  the  strategy  of  the  European  HPC 
ecosystem. 

The  future  European  Science  Cloud  requires  new  tools  and  access  methods  to  resources  in 
order to create an innovation environment for the data-driven science that is easier to access 
and use. A longer-term step in the HPC strategy is to support the evolution of PRACE towards 
a  sustainable  globally  leading  e-Infrastructure  and  a  key  component  of  the  innovation 
environment  of  the  European  Science  Cloud,  through  the  coordination  of  the  different 
resources at national and European level to match the needs of the researchers and research 
infrastructures.  

The HPC Communication identified governance as one of the key elements for an EU HPC 
renewal.  There were two main dimensions identified to such governance:  

•  For industry, through the industry-led technology platform for EU HPC suppliers, and a 
network of competence centres providing expertise and services on HPC applications and 
software development;  

•  For  science,  through  PRACE  and  centres  of  excellence  addressing  key  societal  and 

scientific challenges by deployment and application of HPC software and services. 

The  governance  in  HPC  has  considerably  evolved  in  the  last  few  years,  creating  a  real 
awareness of the importance of HPC for Europe and of the need to setting concrete objectives, 

46

 
 
 
 
deciding policies, monitoring progress and efficiently pooling and using resources available at 
EU-level,  in  particular  with  the  establishment  of  PRACE  in  2010  and  the  European 
Technology Platform for HPC (ETP4HPC) in 2011.  

ETP4HPC gathers mainly suppliers of HPC technology, but  also research organisations  and 
universities, and supercomputer centres active in PRACE. PRACE has also an observer role 
in  the  platform,  ensuring  a  constant  communication  channel  between  the  two  organisations. 
The  ETP4HPC  has  achieved  enormous  progress  in  a  short  time  with  the  production  of  the 
Vision paper68 and the Strategic Research Agenda (2012),69 and later with the establishment 
of  the  cPPP  on  HPC  in  2014.  ETP4HPC  has  been  developing  more  or  less  formal  and/or 
technical  links  with  a  number  of  initiatives,  other  organisations  or  cPPPs,  infrastructures  or 
large projects, such as PRACE; BigDataValue cPPP; 5G cPPP; SKA,  the  Square  Kilometre 
Array;  ELIXIR  –actually  an  ETP4HPC  member;  EESI;  ECSEL;  HiPEAC;  HBP;  and 
Photonics21. 

The HPC cPPP main goals and high-level objectives are to: 
•  develop  the  next  generation  of  HPC  technologies,  applications  and  systems  towards 

exascale (i.e. 10 to the power of 18 operations per second); 

•  achieving excellence in HPC applications. 

The HPC cPPP brings together technology providers and users via the ETP4HPC and future 
Centres of Excellence for computing applications. The cPPP focuses on two of the three axes 
of  the  European  HPC  strategy  as  shown  in  the  figure  below,  working  in  cooperation  with 
PRACE as the provider of a world-class Pan-European HPC infrastructure, in order to span all 
aspects of the value chain of HPC and all three ‘axes' of the EC HPC strategy in Horizon 2020 
(technologies, infrastructures, usages and applications): 

More detailed objectives of the cPPP are: 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

to build a European world-class HPC technology value chain that is globally competitive 
– synergy between technology development, applications and computing infrastructure; 
to achieve a critical mass of convergent resources in order to increase the competitiveness 
of European HPC vendors and solutions; 
to  leverage  the  transformative  power  of  HPC  to  boost  European  competitiveness  in 
science and business; 
to  expand  the  HPC  base,  especially  SMEs  (both  as  users  and  suppliers  of  competitive 
HPC technology solutions); 
to  develop  an  EU  leadership  and  world-wide  excellence  in  key  application  domains  for 
industry, science and society. 

The next step in the strategy is the launch of the EXDCI support action in 2015. The evolution 
of  the  HPC  governance  at  EU-level  will  be  strengthened  by  EXDCI70.  The  three  most 
significant  HPC  activities  in  Europe,  PRACE,  ETP4HPC  and  EESI,  have  joined  forces  to 
coordinate  the  strategy  of  the  European  HPC  ecosystem.  In  particular,  the  project  will 
harmonize  the  road-mapping  and  performance  monitoring  activities  to  produce  tools  for 
coherent strategy-making and its implementation by: 

68 ETP4HPC, The Vision paper  
69 ETP4HPC, The Strategic Research Agenda  
70 http://www.exdci.eu/ 

47

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
• Producing and aligning roadmaps for HPC Technology and HPC Applications; 

• Measuring the implementation of the European HPC strategy; 

•  Building  and  maintaining  relations  with  other  international  HPC  activities  and 
regions; 

• Supporting the generation of young talent as a crucial element of the development of 
European HPC. 

The structuring of the EU-level governance in HPC is going beyond the HPC Communication 
recommendation  to  EU  Industry  engaged  in  supply  of  HPC  systems  and  services  "to 
coordinate research agendas through the technology platform and thereby create critical mass 
of industrial  R&D  in  HPC". EXDCI will  contribute to the synergetic implementation of the 
three  axes  of  the  European  HPC  strategy  (HPC  Infrastructure,  HPC  Technology  Provision, 
and HPC Application Resources) by putting in place tools for strategic review and definition 
for all the three axes, and by setting up a process for the creation of relevant roadmaps and the 
review of project results in the three axes. It is expected that EXDCI will also contribute to a 
better outreach and communication of the European HPC strategy, making sure that Member 
States and key members of the HPC community in Europe are aware of the EU HPC plans 
and activities. 

The  future  European  Science  Cloud  requires  new  tools  and  access  methods  to  resources  in 
order to create an innovation environment for the data-driven science that is easier to access 
and use (e.g. easier cloud-based integrated access to HPC resources including PRACE, Tier-1, 
Tier-2,  etc.).  A  longer-term  step  in  strategy  is  to  engage  in  a  discussion  process  with 
PRACE  and  the  other  actors  (e.g.  other  e-infrastructures  and  research  infrastructures 
stakeholders, including ESFRI) to integrate HPC in the innovation environment of the 
European Science Cloud. Further efforts should support the evolution of PRACE towards a 
sustainable  globally  leading  e-Infrastructure  and  a  key  component  of  the  European  Science 
Cloud, through the coordination of the different resources at national and European level to 
match the needs of the researchers and research infrastructures.  

2.  Financial envelope for HPC 

The  estimations  of  public  and  private  investments  for  Europe  to  achieve  leadership  by 
2020  are  €3.263  billion  in  5  years  (2016  to  2020)  or  €5.271  billion  in  7  years  (2016  to 
2022)  in  order  to  match  the  developments  of  Europe's  main  competitors  for  HPC 
leadership in competitive  time frames, meaning a similar  effort to the U.S.A. in terms of 
number of systems: two pre-exascale systems around 2019-2020 and two exascale systems 
around 2022. 

The  increase  in  2009  investment  levels  recommended  in  the  HPC  Communication  (some 
additional €600 million 71 per year to bring Europe back as a major actor in the field of HPC) 
has not been evenly distributed in the last few years. Although the European spending in the 

71 The recommendation was for half of these additional resources to be dedicated the procurement of HPC systems and 
testbeds, a further quarter for training people, and the last quarter for development and up-scaling of HPC software 

48

 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
overall  HPC  market  (including  servers,  software,  storage,  services,  etc.)  grew  24.4%  in  the 
period 2009-2013, the European expenditure in strategic supercomputers (systems sold over 
360  k€)  increased  from  €715  million  in  2010  to  reac
2012, but falling to €780 million in  2013 and €660 million in 2014.  

h  the  peak  of  more  than  €1  billion  in 

Due  to  the  increasing  strategic  importance  of  HPC  and  the  race  to  exascale  computing, 
competing  regions  (in  particular  the  public/government  sector)  have  significantly  increased 
the  spending  in  HPC.  The  overall  European-wide  investments  on  HPC  (public  and  private) 
including  R&D,  supercomputer  purchases,  and  related  services  in  2010  amounted  to 
approximately  €1.8  billion Error!  Bookmark  not  defined..  However,  the  current  growth  of  European 
investment in HPC will not be enough to attain and maintain leadership, meaning at minimum 
parity  with  best-in-class  HPC  resources  in  the  U.S.A.,  Japan,  or  China.  Significant 
investments will especially be needed for pre-exascale systems in the period 2019-2020 and 
exascale systems as of 2022, and the accompanying development of the HPC ecosystem. Note 
that all these countries have extended the exascale horizon from 2020 as initially estimated to 
2022, following the most recent timeframe estimates. 

U.S.A. government spending on HPC will exceed €1.5 billion in fiscal year 2015 and 
will be more than €1.7 billion in fiscal year 2016. (These figures do not count HPC 
spending  by  the  U.S.A.  intelligence community). Current plans foresee at least three 
pre-exascale systems in 2017-2019 and exascale systems in 2022. Japan has set aside 
a $1.38 billion undertaking for one near-exascale computer in 2020.   

The  estimationsError!  Bookmark  not  defined.  of  public  and  private  investments  for  Europe  to 
achieve leadership by 2020 are €3.263 billion in 5 years  (2016 to 2020) or €5.271 billion 
in 7 years (2016 to 2022) in order to match the developments of Europe's main competitors 
for HPC leadership in competitive time frames. These amounts entail an increase with respect 
to  current  investments  in  the  order  of  additional  €500  million  to  €750  million  per  year  
(roughly  in  the  same  order  of  the  recommendations  in  the  HPC  Communication).  For  the 
calculations  of  the  total  investments  in  5  or  7  years,  the  following  assumptions  have  been 
taken:  the  lower  figure  for  leadership  (€500  million  increase  per  year)  with  a  5%  yearly 
increase, a total cost (purchase and operation) of a pre-exascale system of €250 million, a total 
the cost of a exascale system of €350 million, and a similar effort to the U.S.A. in terms of 
number  of  systems  (i.e.  two  pre-exascale  systems  around  2019-2020  and  two  exascale 
systems around 2022). 

A  lesser  minimal  HPC  funding  level  (i.e.  increase  of  €250  million  per  year)  would  allow 
Europe to at best stay close to its current level, but most likely to fall behind somewhat within 
3 to 4 years. At this level there still need to be major investments in software and applications, 
and exascale system purchases are still critical, but they would happen about 1.5 years after 
the first exascale systems show up elsewhere in the world, and even then systems in Europe 
may be perhaps only half-exascale in size. 

It is clear that this huge amount of investments require a strong coordination of the different 
national HPC policies and the European strategy.  

49

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
3.  The implementation of funding mechanisms and pooling of resources  

The U.S.A., Japan, and China have mechanisms to promote innovation in leadership 
supercomputing while providing advantages to national suppliers over competing nations 
and global regions. Procurements are in most cases restricted to national players, while 
there are no such restrictions in European procurements.  

No clear strategy has been agreed yet at European level for pooling resources to amass 
the huge resources needed to finance the acquisition of pre-exascale supercomputers 
around 2020 and exascale supercomputers in 2022. 

The next step in the European HPC strategy is to put in place a coordinated strategy with 
mechanisms for transitioning the European set of leading machines to the new computing 
generation.  

The HPC Communication relied on the fact that the public sector is the mayor buyer of high-
end  HCP,  and  invited  Member  States  to  carry  out  joint  procurements  and  the  use  of  Pre-
Commercial Procurement (PCP) to stimulate the development of advanced HPC systems and 
services (devoting around 10% of the annual HPC procurement budget to it). The idea was to 
support  HPC  suppliers  for  developing  a  leadership-class  HPC  system  about  every  2  years. 
However, the use of PCP in Europe has not lived to these expectations. 

Although the EU and U.S.A. have similar levels of spend on basic and applied R&D (2% 
of GDP in Europe versus 2.5% of GDP in the USA), the USA has, over the past 30 years, 
followed  a  public  procurement  policy  that  encourages  early  procurement  by  the  public 
sector  of  new  innovative  products  prior  to  their  commercial  release.  This  has  led  to  a 
great  difference  between  public  procurement  of  R&D  results  by  Europe  and  the  USA 
(EUR 2.5 billion in Europe versus EUR 50 billion in the USA annually). This twenty times 
difference is felt by the EC to be a major contributing factor in Europe’s inability to build 
large innovative companies, particularly in the IT sector.72 

This  lack  of  the  European  procurers  proactively  acquainting  themselves  with  emerging 
innovations and steering industrial developments to meet future public sector needs (PCP) 
also slows down the adoption rate of innovative solutions in the public sector in Europe 
(PPI).73 

The governments of the United States, Japan, and China have similar mechanisms to the PCP 
and  PPI  to  promote  innovation  in  leadership  supercomputing,  i.e.,  innovation  that  provides 
advantages  to  national  suppliers  over  competing  nations  and  global  regions.  Major  national 
procurements that have incorporated these mechanisms include the Tianhe-1a supercomputer 
(China), the K supercomputer (Japan), and the CORAL procurements (United States). These 
procurements  are  in  most  cases  restricted  to  national  players,  and  have  resulted  in 
contracts  between  a  national  government  and  a  domestic  supercomputer  maker,  benefiting 
both the government buyers and the domestic HPC industry.  

72 e-Infrastructure Leadership Council. "UK Participation in HPC at the European Level." June 25, 2012.  
73 European Commission, "Policy-Related Frequently Asked Questions on PCP and PPI."  

50

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
 
 
The  PCP  and  PPI  in  the  European  environment  however  do  not  apply  such  restrictions.  In 
general  terms,  these  instruments  are  used  today  only  occasionally  in  Europe  for  HPC.  The 
main reasons for this are the newness of supercomputer procurements that include EU-wide 
goals  and  the  paucity  of  Europe-based  supercomputer  vendors  and  other  suppliers.  Another 
reason (applicable to any world region) is that the assumed benefit to the supplier may not be 
realized, for example, if the government buyer's pre-commercial requirements are so specific 
("one-off")  that  they  do  not  adequately  address  the  needs  of  the  commercial  market74  -  and 
this has been the case for some large HPC procurements, mainly in the U.S.A. At European 
level,  only  two  PCPs  are  currently  being  carried  out  (in  the  PRACE-3IP  project  and  in  the  
Human Brain Project flagship), but with limited budget and scope.  

Collaboration  mechanisms  for  supercomputer  acquisitions  that  leverage  R&D 
collaborations  have  been  established,  e.g.  CEA  and  Bull  (Atos)  for  several  systems, 
the  SuperMUC  system  at 
the  "Hornet" 
supercomputer acquisition by HLRS, and the Human Brain Project sponsored by the 
European Commission.  

the  Leibniz  Rechenzentrum  (LRZ), 

In addition, no clear strategy has been agreed yet at European level for pooling resources to 
amass  the  huge  resources  needed  to  finance  the  acquisition  of  pre-exascale  supercomputers 
around  2020  and  exascale  supercomputers  in  2022:  this  is  critical  for  Europe  to  remain 
competitive  with  the  U.S.A.,  China  and  Japan.  Pooling  resources  to  acquire  exascale 
supercomputers  in  globally  competitive  time  frames  require  that  the  adequate  governance 
structures are in place to facilitate coordination of national and European HPC policies. A first 
step direction in this has been taken in this sense, with the PPI on HPC in the e-infrastructure 
WP2016-2017, but again with a limited budget. 

The  next  step  in  the  European  HPC  strategy  is  to  put  in  place  a  coordinated  strategy 
with mechanisms (including PPI) for transitioning the European set of leading machines 
to the new computing generation.  

4.  Development of the European HPC eco-system 

The  development  of  the  European  HPC  ecosystem  has  to  ensure  the  coordination  of 
technology developers and suppliers, users and procurers. A significant integration and 
co-design effort is needed to gather the players in the HPC ecosystem and focus on the 
advancement of technologies, HPC resources, tools and methodologies that respond to 
the user needs. 

The next steps in the European HPC strategy will be the large-scale platform integration 
of  the  technology  building  blocks  with  a  co-design  approach,  complemented  with  the 
coordinated  acquisition  at  EU  level  of  world-class  systems  in  order  to  transition  the 
European  leading  supercomputers  to  the  new  computing  generation,  and  the  further 
integration of the European HPC infrastructure. This is similar to  the approach of the 
U.S.A. Department of Energy (DoE) for their Exascale Computing Initiative. 

74 Survey of the ASC Program's Effectiveness in Stimulating HPC Innovation. IDC special study for the U.S.A. Department 
of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. 2008. 

51

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
 
The  overall  objective  of  the  European  HPC  strategy  "ensuring  European  leadership  in  the 
supply and use of HPC systems and services by 2020" can be interpreted as Europe having a 
HPC ecosystem that is on a par with the best in the world, and that Europe aims to be number 
one in the world in targeted aspects of HPC.  

The  HPC  Communication  outlined  a  number  of  measures  for  the  development  of  the  HPC 
ecosystem,  ensuring  the  coordination  of  technology  developers  and  suppliers,  users  and 
procurers.  This  requires  a  synergetic  implementation  of  the  three  axes  of  the  HPC  strategy, 
ensuring  the  coordination  of  technology  suppliers  and  the  users  and  procurers  for  the 
definition  on  exascale  requirements,  including  industrial  requirements,  and  support  and 
accelerate  the  development  of  pre-competitive,  innovative  HPC  technologies  and  systems 
towards exascale that respond to the user needs. Section 6 above details the concrete efforts 
supported by the EC in developing this ecosystem. 

As  indicated  in  the  HPC  Communication,  an  integration  and  co-design  effort  is  needed  to 
gather the players in the HPC ecosystem and focus on the advancement of technologies, HPC 
resources, tools and methodologies. Co-design in HPC is necessary as the needs of science 
and  industry  will  best  be  served  if  new  hardware  and  software  are  designed  and 
developed  in  close  coordination  with  each  other,  rather  than  separately  (as  has  often 
happened).  Technological  advances  produced  in  isolation  require  several  years  of 
development of the necessary software and application environment. In a highly competitive 
environment, this delay is not acceptable. 
Several  European  projects  such  as  Mont-Blanc75  and  DEEP76  are  making  leading-class 
advances in HPC technologies, using the co-design approach: 

Mont-Blanc is designing a new type of computer architecture capable of defining future 
global HPC standards that will deliver exascale performance while using 15 to 30 time 
less  energy.  The  reduction  of  energy  consumption  will  be  achieved  by  developing  a  full 
energy-efficient  HPC  prototype  using  low-power  commercially  available  embedded 
technology. Mont-Blanc is a world-leading approach in the use of low-power technologies 
that can radically change the way supercomputers are built, programmed and use 

DEEP  -  Dynamical  Exascale  Entry  Platform-  is  developing  a  novel,  exascale-enabling 
supercomputing platform with lower energy consumption (water cooling with a more than 
200x efficiency improvement over comparable air-cooled systems) but with a monitoring 
system of unprecedented accuracy and granularity relating application activity to energy 
consumption, which helps users optimize and tune their system according to their needs. 
DEEP  is  suitable  for  a  wide  range  of  codes  with  either  limited  or  high  scalability 
requirements, thanks to its heterogeneous architecture, with a programming model and a 
dedicated development and runtime environment which makes porting applications easy. 

The next steps in the European HPC strategy will be the large-scale platform integration 
of  the  technology  building  blocks  with  a  co-design  approach,  complemented  with  the 
coordinated  acquisition  at  EU  level  of  world-class  systems  in  order  to  transition  the 
European  leading  supercomputers  to  the  new  computing  generation,  and  the  further 
integration  of  the  European  HPC  infrastructure.  This  is  similar  to  the  approach  of  the 

75 http://www.montblanc-project.eu/ 
76 http://www.deep-project.eu/deep-project/EN/Home/home_node.html 

52

 
 
 
 
                                                 
 
 
U.S.A. Department of Energy (DoE) for their Exascale Computing Initiative77 (encompassing 
the  development  of  building  blocks  and  their  integration  into  co-design  platforms,  the 
development  of  exascale-capable  applications  and  software,  and  the  coordinated  acquisition 
for exascale platforms and systems deployment). In detail, the steps are the following: 

•  Technological  development  of  key  building  blocks  (e.g.  software  stack  including 

programming models, node architectures, algorithms, and a first-level co-design); 

• 

Integration of the technological building blocks into extreme-scale co-design platforms to 
first reach pre-exascale performance level by 2019/2020 (0.2-0.3 Exaflops at ~20 MW i.e. 
10 times today's performance with the same energy consumption) and to achieve exascale 
performance by 2021-2022 within the same 20 MW envelope, with the necessary exascale 
application  software  for  commercial  exploitation  by  2023.  These  platforms  serve  as 
‘stepping stones’ towards a more expedited exploitation and better services for scientific 
and industrial use of the underlying system design and technology. Exascale applications 
software  packages  will  then  be  ported  enabling  monitoring  of  extreme  parallelism, 
reliability, resiliency and scalability;  

•  Coordinated  acquisition  strategy.  In  cooperation  with  PRACE,  the  platform  integration 
will  be  complemented  with  procurement/acquisition  of  pre-  and  exascale  systems  for 
transitioning the European set of leading machines to the new computing generation (the 
U.S.A.  Department  of  Energy  plans  for  acquiring  pre-exascale  systems  in  fiscal  years 
2016 through 2022 and an initial exascale system in 2023-2024).   

The EU strategy needs to ensure that all stakeholders in an exascale ecosystem can participate 
in such integration and co-design activities. The EXDCI support action is a first step in this 
coordination. This will require ETP4HPC to collaborate closely with PRACE, CoEs and other 
users to ensure that the ETP4HPC roadmap  for indigenous technology development reflects 
the technology and system-level innovations required by end-users and procurers, and to test 
hardware and software technologies at large scale in the appropriate environments.  

The  aims  are  to  accelerate  HPC  innovations  by  European  suppliers  and  to  increase  the 
likelihood  that  these  innovations  will  be  incorporated  into  supercomputer  procurements  that 
enable  the  European  technologies  to  mature  in  real-world  customer  environments.  Such  an 
effort will also provide the opportunity to enrich the long-term European exascale technology 
roadmap,  allowing  HPC  players  to  understand  the  overall  vision  of  the  EU  HPC  leadership 
program and where they fit in.  

Finally,  the  development  of  the  HPC  ecosystem  requires  the  joint  effort  of  the  supply  and 
demand sides, with the aim of best matching the real needs of HPC users. The realisation of 
Europe as a world-leading innovation hub requires the new world-class computing capability 
to be easier to access and use in a wider European framework. This action is complementary 
to the actions points developed under "Governance" above.  

77 U.S.A. Department of Energy, " Preliminary Conceptual Design for An Exascale Computing Initiative" 

53

 
 
 
 
                                                 
5.  Industrial exploitation of HPC 

The establishment of the ETP4HPC  in  2011  was a turning point for the  HPC supply in 
Europe, coordinating and strengthening the efforts of the EU HPC industry to ensure an 
independent and state-of-the-art EU supply of key HPC technology. 

Considerable  progress  has  happened  in  the  last  few  years  regarding  industrial  use  of 
HPC.  Several  Member  States  continued  or  set  up  new  HPC  competence  centres  that 
facilitate  access  of  industry  and  specifically  SMEs  to  HPC  services.  At  European  level, 
there  are  several  successful  examples  of  programs  supporting  industrial  access  and 
collaboration, such as PRACE Industry Access, PRACE SHAPE, or Fortissimo. 

However,  a  much  bigger  effort  is  needed  to  reach  out  to  potential  industrial  users  at 
national and European level. In particular for SMEs, to provide easy (and locally close) 
access to HPC resources, services, skills and consultancy that are not available in-house.  

The next steps in the strategy are:  

•  support  the  "democratisation"  of  HPC  resources,  taking  advantage  of  the  new 
opportunities  offered  by  the  convergence  of  HPC,  Big  Data  and  Cloud  for  wide 
spreading  HPC  use,  like  platforms  for  on-demand  HPC-empowered  Cloud 
services for science and industry  

•  support  the  easier  access  for  industrial  user  of  HPC  applications  and  codes,  or 

"cloudification of HPC applications" 

•  promote  HPC 

from  a 
multidisciplinary  point of view, exploiting the combination of Web-programming 
skills with cloud-based access to HPC resources17 

in  academic  curricula  and  skill  development 

The  HPC  Communication  stressed  the  importance  of  the  dual  role  of  Industry  in  high-end 
computing:  firstly,  supplying  systems,  technologies  and  software  services  for  HPC;  and 
secondly,  using  HPC  to  innovate  in  products,  processes  and  services.  Both  are  important  in 
making  Europe  more  competitive,  and  the  Action  Plan  advocates  for  a  dual  approach: 
strengthening both the industrial demand and supply of HPC. 

Industrial HPC supply 

The  Communication  encouraged  EU  HPC  Industry  to  strengthen  its  efforts  to  ensure  an 
independent and state-of-the-art EU supply of key HPC technology. The establishment of the 
ETP4HPC  in  2011  was  a  turning  point  for  the  HPC  supply  in  Europe.  ETP4HPC  defines 
"European  supplier"  as  any  supplier  that  performs  R&D  in  Europe,  no  matter  where  in  the 
world  the  supplier  has  the  headquarters.  This  allows  European  scientists  and  engineers,  as 
well  as  Europe-based  suppliers,  to  benefit  from  R&D  collaborations  that  also  involve 
suppliers not based in Europe. It is especially important that European suppliers (again using 
ETP4HPC's definition) not only participate in exascale technology innovation, but also gain 
experience  and  feedback  in  real-world  HPC  customer  environments.  As  developed  in  the 
previous  section  of  this  document,  ETP4HPC  roadmaps  for  indigenous  technology 
development  need  to  be  closely  linked  to  industrial  user  needs  (requiring  a  strong 
collaboration  with  the  user  industry)  and  to  the  requirements  driving  supercomputer 

54

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
procurements  (requiring  a  close  collaboration  with  HPC  procurers  in  Member  States 
(PRACE)). 

Industrial use of HPC 

On the industrial use, and as illustrated in previous sections of this document, access to HPC, 
modelling, simulation, product prototyping services and consulting is very important (and in 
some areas critical) to remain competitive.  

Thanks  in  part  to  its  expanding  use  in  industry  and  commerce,  during  the  past  two 
decades  HPC  has  been  one  of  the  fastest-growing  IT  markets,  expanding  from  €1.5 
billion in 1990 to more than €15 billion in 2013.  

Industrial  firms  typically  cannot  justify  acquiring  leadership  supercomputers,  but  industrial 
firms of all sizes can have computing problems that are just as challenging as major scientific 
computing  problems.  To  advance  European  economic  competitiveness,  it  is  therefore 
important  to  enable  industry  to  access  supercomputing  resources  that  the  companies  lack, 
especially  because  the  problems  requiring  these  resources  are  typically  mission-critical.  In 
this sense, the Action Plan stressed the importance of for industry to be given increased access 
to HPC resources at PRACE Tier-0 centres as well as at national and regional HPC centres in 
Europe.  

Considerable progress has happened in the last few years. Several Member States continued 
or  set  up  new  HPC  competence  centres  that  facilitate  access  of  industry  and  specifically 
SMEs to HPC services, with supercomputing centres giving support and transfer expertise to 
them. Some of these centres are world's leaders in collaboration with industry.  

These models of industrial collaborations in Member States include HLRS (Stuttgart), Teratec 
(Paris),  SURFsara  (Amsterdam),  CINECA  (Bologna),  LRZ  (Munich),  Hartree  Centre 
(Daresbury),  to  name  a  few.  Europe,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  also  has  many  HPC  centres 
that  have  recently  added  industrial  outreach  programs  and  are  struggling  with  how  to  work 
with  industry.  Centres  with  strong  industrial  experience  are  well  positioned  to  mentor  less-
experienced centres, and to assume leadership roles in any future HPC competence centres. It 
is  very  important  to  fully  exploit  the  existing  competency  of  the  HPC  centres  with  the 
experience of industrial collaboration for any future plans for new competence centres.  

At  European  level,  there  are  several  successful  examples  of  programs  supporting  industrial 
access  and  collaboration,  such  as  PRACE42  Industry  Access,  PRACE  SHAPE,  or 
Fortissimo.17  

The PRACE Industry Access allows European companies access to world-class HPC 
resources  and  services.  PRACE  opened  access  to  industrial  users  in  January  2012 
and has provided around 309 million CPU hours on Tier-0 supercomputers to more 
than fifty companies with.  Twice-yearly calls offer qualifying companies free access 
to  PRACE  resources  (including  training),  with  an  Open  R&D  business  model,  i.e. 
industrial users may only use the facilities and services provided by the infrastructure 
for  basic  research  and  development  purposes,  with  the  condition  for  the  industrial 
user to publish all results obtained at the end of the grant period. 

55

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SHAPE  (SME  HPC  Adoption  Programme  in  Europe)  is  a  pan-European  PRACE-
based  programme  supporting  HPC  adoption  by  SMEs.  SHAPE  aims  to  raise 
awareness and equip European SMEs with the expertise necessary to take advantage 
of 
their 
competitiveness. 

innovation  possibilities  opened  up  by  HPC, 

increasing 

thus 

the 

Fortissimo  enables  European  manufacturing  SMEs  to  benefit  from  the  increased 
efficiency  and  competitive  advantage  offered  by  simulation.  However,  SMEs  don't 
have  the  pool  of  skills  and  resources  to  access  advanced  simulation  (e.g.  expensive 
HPC equipment, licensing cost of tools, etc.). Fortissimo provides simulation services 
running  on  a  cloud  infrastructure  exploiting  HPC  systems  and  making  appropriate 
skills and tools available in a distributed, internet-based cloud environment. 

However, a much bigger effort is needed to reach out to potential industrial users at national 
and  European  level,  in  terms  of  communicating  the  possibilities  of  HPC,  the  HPC  strategy, 
and available initiatives and resources to a broader industrial community interested in HPC -
only a small percentage of European SMEs that could be helped by HPC seem aware of these 
opportunities.  This  reaching-out  should  be  accompanied  with  extra  efforts  to  provide  the 
necessary  capacities  to  satisfy  the  growing  industrial  needs.  In  addition,  existing  programs 
tend to award access on the same basis that is used for science—peer-review to determine the 
scientific  merit  of  projects.  There  are  few  or  no  mechanisms  for  letting  industrial 
organisations and in particular SMEs that are new to HPC gain limited, initial access by for 
example  trying  HPC  without  cost,  and  with  perspective  of  bringing  value  to  their  business 
rather than showing scientific merit.  

In particular regarding SMEs, easy (and locally close) access to HPC resources, services, and 
even more important, skills, guidance and consultancy in HPC are not available in-house. In 
this sense, and as suggested in the HPC Communication Action Plan, the EC has set up the 
SESAME-NET78  network  of  HPC  competence  centres,  bringing  together  a  diverse  mix  of 
established national centres of excellence and regional HPC centres across Europe, SESAME-
NET  will  promote  access  to  computational  facilities,  pool  expertise  and  resources  across 
Europe  and  share  best  practice  in  HPC  industrial  use,  raising  awareness  of  the  benefits  of 
HPC and contributing to the implementation of the European HPC Strategy. 

Software will be one of the main determinants of future HPC leadership and Europe is very 
strong in parallel software development. Currently there is no mechanism at European level to 
help  in  this  sense,  but  the  HPC  Centres  of  Excellence  will  function  as  incubators  for 
collaborations  involving  users  and  software  developers  from  European  HPC  user  sites  and 
vendors.  

The next steps in the strategy can be summarised as follows:  

•  The  "democratisation"  of  HPC  resources, 

the  new 
opportunities  offered  by  the  convergence  of  HPC,  Big  Data  and  Cloud  for  wide 
spreading  HPC  use,  like  platforms  for  on-demand  HPC-empowered  Cloud 
services  for  science  and  industry.  These  platforms  can  make  possible,  facilitating 

taking  advantage  of 

78 http://sesamenetwork.eu 

56

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
access to the new generation of Big Data tools and services such as high performance 
data analytics  to SME’s , start up’s and company departments (for example on a pay-
per-use  model),  and  for  the  researchers  in  the  European  Science  Cloud,  providing 
HPC  computational  resources  in  a  cloud-based  platform  (in  a  similar  way  that  the 
national U.S.A. cyber-infrastructure Jetstream25 to the NSF researchers). 

A European Cloud could for example make possible a partnership between scientific 
data  providers  (e.g.  ESA,  Meteorological  Offices)  and  the  private  supporting  the 
overall infrastructure costs in exchange for first mover access. 

•  Support  the  easier  access  for  industrial  user  of  HPC  applications  and  codes,  or 
"cloudification  of  HPC  applications",  e.g.  by  establishing  software/tool  libraries 
"clearinghouses" to help disseminate innovative European HPC software that is now 
in limited use to a much broader industrial base (including Open Source for free use or 
in cooperation with ISVs -independent software vendors- for pay-per-use).  

This mechanism should provide access to the developers of the software, including the 
necessary  technical  support.  It  should  also  include  a  payment  mechanism  for  paid 
software and, where appropriate, for paid use of HPC cycles at the centres where the 
software was developed. 

HPC training and skills 

The  Action  Plan  encouraged  Member  States  and  the  Commission  to  take  the  measures 
necessary for a critical component of the strategy, i.e. to develop a much larger workforce that 
is well educated and trained in HPC (e.g. through a model curriculum; and through training at 
the HPC competence centres).79 

However,  and  despite  the  important  effort  deployed  by  PRACE  as  described  in  previous 
sections, a much wider effort is still needed. CoEs are still too early to deliver in its potential 
for developing skills and expertise needed for the coming era of exascale computing.  

The HPC talent pool needs to be grown and the image of HPC as career choice needs to be 
campaigned at all levels. While thousands of well-paying HPC jobs go unfilled, many talented 
young  people  are  struggling  today  to  find  jobs  in  their  technical  fields  after  completing 
university education. More effort is needed to acquaint students and faculty, with the exciting 
opportunities available in HPC, starting well before the students enter universities. Exploiting 
the HPC opportunities in science and industry requires creating more HPC-related internships 
and post-doctoral opportunities, as well as guidelines for HPC on-the-job training. 

Because HPC-based modelling and simulation has firmly established itself as the third branch 
of scientific inquiry, alongside theory and experimentation, HPC should be as much a part of 
scientific education curricula. But there is widespread recognition of the difficulty of adding 
new elements to already crowded science and engineering university curricula. There are no 
practical  strategies  for  integrating  HPC  education  and  training  more  fully  into  the  scientific 
and  engineering  curricula  of  European  universities.  This  can  only  be  done  by  universities  
expanding curricula in computational science – as opposed to mere computer science  –  and 

79In line with COM(2007) 496, e-skills for the 21st century: Fostering competitiveness, growth and jobs  

57

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
integrating computational science methods into the requirements for science degrees, certainly 
at the graduate level and preferably also at the undergraduate level. 

The  next  steps  in  the  strategy  will  be  to  promote  HPC  in  academic  curricula  and  skill 
development from a multidisciplinary point of view (i.e. actions that intertwines both the 
computational and the domain-specific aspects), and to explore new training programmes that 
exploit  the  combination  of  a  wider  base  of  Web-programming  skills  (with  respect  to  the 
much scarcer HPC/parallel programming skills) with cloud-based access to HPC resources. 

6.  Ensuring a level-playing field 

Europe is the most open major HPC market in the world.  European HPC system vendors 
face asymmetries in major HPC markets outside of Europe. These asymmetries for free and 
fair  trade  should  be  addressed  on  a  government-to-government  basis,  but  so  far  the  main 
competitors have not changed their policies in this respect. 

The  Commission  will  continue  to  address  inequalities  in  HPC  market  access  in  its  ICT 
Dialogues and trade negotiations with the countries concerned, with the aim of ensuring that 
their national HPC procurement and R&D are open to EU-based industry 

The  HPC  Communication  highlighted  that  in  order  to  develop  an  autonomous  and  viable 
industrial capability in leadership-class HPC, the EU needs to ensure that its HPC industry has 
fair access to the worldwide markets in the same way that industry from other world regions 
has access to the EU’s internal market; and that European R&D investments in the HPC field 
benefit clearly the EU economy. 

Europe historically has been the most open major HPC market in the world. As noted earlier 
in  this  document,  European  HPC  system  vendors  face  asymmetries  in  major  HPC  markets 
outside of Europe.  These procurement, market, trade, and standards-related asymmetries for 
free  and  fair  trade  should  be  addressed  more  proactively  on  a  government-to-government 
basis, but so far the main competitors have not changed their policies in this respect: 

-  Supercomputer  acquisitions  by  U.S.A.  federal  agencies  are  restricted  by  the  "Buy 
American" Act, although purchasing of software and components of non-U.S.A. origin is 
often  allowed.    However,  software  and  component  technologies  from  ARM  Holdings, 
Bright Computing, Dassault Systemes, and other European vendors are not uncommon at 
U.S.A. federal agencies; 

-  Japan's  government  market  historically  has  tended  to  favour  Japanese  supercomputers, 
although non-Japanese supercomputers have had some successes in this market. Japanese 
supercomputer vendors had considerable success selling into European markets, but non-
Japanese HPC system vendors have had limited success penetrating Japan's government 
market and have fared better in the Japanese private sector; 

-  China's 

fast-growing  HPC  market  has  been  dominated  historically  by  U.S.A. 
supercomputer  vendors.  More  recently,  the  Chinese  government  directed  investment 
banks  and  other  "critical  infrastructure"  sites  to  cease  acquiring  non-Chinese  HPC 

58

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
systems.  Lenovo's  purchase  of  IBM's  x86-based  HPC  product  line  positions  Lenovo  to 
capture or retain these accounts. 

Europe  has  had  no  HPC  server  vendors  large  enough  to  compete  with  America's  HP,  IBM, 
and Dell, or Japan's NEC and Fujitsu, or China's Lenovo (following the acquisition of IBM's 
x86-based  HPC  server  business).  As  a  result,  U.S.A.  vendors  represented  89.6%  of  all 
European HPC server system revenue/spending in 2009 and 81.2% in 2014. The only sizeable 
Europe-based vendor, Atos (formerly Bull), accounted for only 1.7% of European HPC server 
spending in 2009 and 2.0% in 2014. The acquisition of Bull may position France-based Atos 
to  compete  more  successfully  against  these  non-European  vendors  in  the  European  and 
worldwide HPC markets. 

It  is  also  important  to  note  that  Europe  today  accounts  for  only  about  one-quarter  of  the 
worldwide market for HPC hardware systems and parallel software. This means that Europe-
based  HPC  vendors  generally  cannot  thrive  and  continually  fund  world-class  innovation 
unless they can match the investments of competitors who have fair and open access to the 
larger worldwide market.  

The  Commission  will  continue  to  address  inequalities  in  HPC  market  access  in  its  ICT 
Dialogues and trade negotiations with the countries concerned, with the aim of ensuring that 
their national HPC procurement and R&D are open to EU-based industry.80  

Regarding  Intellectual  Property  Rights  (IPR)  that  are  generated  in  the  area  of  HPC  with 
Horizon 2020 support, the Commission has not applied additional exploitation obligations, as 
the  organisations  participating  in  the  R&I  activities  prefer  to  stay  within  the  standard  IPR 
rules of the programme. 

80 In line with WTO Government Procurement Agreement, Article III 

59

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                 
Annex: Web References 

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CISCO, The Zettabyte Era—Trends and Analysis, 
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25, 2012.  
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ETP4HPC, The Strategic Research Agenda  
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Europe", COM(2012) 529 final,  
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global race", COM(2012) 45 final 
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2012:0045:FIN:EN:PDF 

60

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
European Commission, Staff Working Document, "Pre-commercial Procurement: Driving 
innovation to ensure sustainable high quality public services in Europe", COM(2007) 799 
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European Commission, "Policy-Related Frequently Asked Questions on PCP and PPI." 
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European Commission Communication, "e-skills for the 21st century: Fostering 
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IDC Study "A Strategic Agenda for European Leadership in Supercomputing: HPC 2020", 
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IDC, THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE IN 2020, http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-
reports/idc-the-digital-universe-in-2020.pdf 

61

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
IDC study for U.S.A. Council on Competitiveness "HPC Use in Industry", 
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%E2%80%98powerful-engine-growth%E2%80%99 

PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) 
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Industry Access: http://www.prace-ri.eu/industry-access 
SHAPE programme: http://www.prace-ri.eu/hpc-access/shape-programme/ 

U.S.A. Department of Energy, "Preliminary Conceptual Design for an Exascale Computing 
Initiative" 
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U.S.A. National Science Foundation, Jetstream  
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http://www.jetstream-cloud.org/  

62