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© The HOISe-NM Consortium 1997
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EC initiatives promoting HPCN
Vienna, 30-4-97 Three talks at HPCN Europe were dedicated to activities partially funded by the European Commission in order to promote the use of HPCN technologies in the industry. The Parallel Computing Initiative, Europort and the Technology Transfer Nodes programme The future Fifth Framework programme will also support this kind of transfer activities.
Tom Clausen from the European Commission summarised the results of the Parallel Computing Initiative (PCI) which started in January 1995 in 2 countries: Italy and Spain. Each of the two consortia included end-users, technology providers and parallelisation experts, and was managed by a coordinator (ENEA for Italy, CEPBA for Spain).
This initiative ended in October 1996. Some numbers :
- Funding from the Commission : 6,4 MEcus
- 30 projects involving 85 different organisations (85% of which are SMEs)
The Europort programme was introduced by Stephen Brindel (Smith System Eng.). The European industry was facing a problem: the parallel hardware/software deadlock. The objective of Europort was to port various important application codes on parallel platforms. Each porting consortium included the code owner (software house, ...), parallelisation expert(s) and industrial end-user(s).
The Europort programme was coordinated by Smith System Engineering (UK) and GMD (Germany). It ended in early 96.
38 codes, in various applications areas, were ported. The Europort consortia involved more than 100 partners.
Brindel told at HPCN Europe that the main future trends are :
- codes will be less hardware specific
- more use of existing hardware, especially NOW (networks of workstations)
- more cost effective solutions (today's HPC performance will be available on the desktop in 5 years)
Finally, Max Lemke (European Commission) introduced the TTNs (Technology Transfer Nodes).
Within the Esprit IV programme, the HPCN workprogramme has five R&D areas and three take-up activities. The HPCN Preparatory, Support and Transfer (PST) Activities are complementary to the HPCN R&D projects and target the transfer and take-up of High Performance Computing and Networking technologies and services in all relevant sectors of industry, in particular in small and medium size enterprises. Starting in March 1997, a large number of these activities are carried out within the network of Technology Transfer Nodes.
Each TTN is a cluster coordinating PST activities. Each PST activity is managed by a consortium consisting of one or more industrial end-users, who should have the driving role, technology providers and the necessary experts. The TTN is also the interface between the activities and the network of TTNs and the Commission; it has also to disseminate the results through the network of TTNs.
In April 1997 there are:
- 20 TTNs accross Europe (regional basis or application oriented basis)
- 75 activities involving 320 organisations of which 131 are SMEs
- 25 MEcus committed by the Commission (15 MEcus more should be committed until March 1998)
Relevant documents and information can be obtained on the Esprit Web server