We are now in the 4th Framework programme of Esprit which allocates in the IT area some 30 MEcu/year to HPCN. This must help all industry in Europe to be more competitive. New in European programs, is the fact that potential users are provided with information on what will become available under the program. This means that there are budgets, for activities that are not particularly R&D but rather supporting measures and dissemination activities. There were times that people in the European Parliament did not want to give a penny for this kind of activity. It was simply not realized that for research to be really exploited, people must be told what is, or will be, available.
Esprit started some 12 years ago around the big 12 IT companies in Europe (such as Philips, Bull, and Siemens). It was an effort in creating a better IT industry through collaboration of researchers. In the 3rd Framework there were large projects, the idea being that Europe needs standards and so one needs to have all competitors in one basket to make sure that, in the end, the parameters chosen are accepted all over Europe. Having competitors working in one project can work, but only on partial results, and there remained the problem to re-integrate these partial results into one product.
This idea has now been abandoned and the HPCN chapter has pioneered not having competitors in one single project but rather a vertical chain of partners working together (e.g. the Europort program with hardware suppliers, code owners, parallelisation experts and end-users). This makes it possible to industrialise results as people are happy, or at least willing, to provide confidential data to partners who are suppliers or customers rather than competitors.
The HPCN programme targets three kind of applications: simulation, information management & decision support (including the handling of enormous quantities of data), and embedded systems (to be used in sophisticated automation and in complex integrated systems). All these examples can be abundantly found in the Europort Programme. Europort was a good example of a modern European programme, a lot of emphasis was put on dissemination.
With (naturalised) Americans in the audience the lively question & answer session following Bradier's presentation soon turned to political and economical issues. One point was: if you really think that industrial relevance is that important why not let the market decide, because that is the best and ultimate way. Bradier (again) explained that the Commission wants European industry to be competative, this is done by helping people to take some calculated risk. The selection for this support is done by publicised touchstones. Decision is done with the help of people in industry; vendors and experts as well. Moreover, the people that get funding must show commitment as the program only supports, in general, only 50%. Bradier did not mention that the very fact that she was in Cetraro illustrates that part of the work of project officers in Brussels is to meet people (e.g. at such a workshop) to get a feeling where the market is going and on which domain to concentrate.