ANIYAN VARGHESE
European Commission
Dr Varghese at the European Commission in DG CONNECT is focusing on the development and implementation of the strategy for High Performance Computing in EU. He is also responsible for the co-ordination of international cooperation for the Directorate C: Excellence in Science. Prior to it he was responsible for the policy development and implementation of interoperable electronic identity management for eGovernment services in the EU, and also for eGovernment research. He has wide experiences at the Commission in policy development and research programme management in eGovernment, trust and security, software systems, and new methods of work. Dr Varghese also has number of years of industrial experience, working on radar and displays, air traffic control systems and naval command and control systems, four years of it as Advanced Technology Manager. He is qualified with a BSc, M.Eng and Ph.D (University of Wales, Cardiff). He has also edited three books and published number of articles, and has given presentations at many conferences and seminars.
High Performance Computing: the EC perspective
The most powerful supercomputers are needed to address scientific and societal grand challenges (e.g. understand the human brain or climate change), as well as by industry to innovate in products and services. The significance and strategic importance of HPC for competitiveness of Europe are highlighted in the European Commission’s communication “High Performance Computing: Europe’s place in a Global Race”. 97% of the industrial companies that employ HPC consider it indispensable for their ability to innovate, compete, and survive. HPC is a strategic resource for Europe’s future. This presentation will outline the EU strategy on High Performance Computing and the steps EU is taking to implement it. The implementation of this HPC strategy combines three elements: (a) developing the next generation of HPC towards exascale; (b) providing access to the best supercomputing facilities and services; and (c) achieving excellence in HPC applications. Europe has in the last few years deployed significant HPC resources for scientific use with the support of EU-funded PRACE infrastructure (www.prace-ri.eu). In addition, recently the major European industries created a European Technology Platform for HPC (ETP4HPC, http://www.etp4hpc.eu/) to improve Europe’s position in the domain of HPC technologies and to foster collaboration among all players in the HPC supply chain. HPC Centre of Excellence (HPC CoE) will develop a culture of excellence, both scientific and industrial, placing computational science at the centre of scientific discovery and industrial competitiveness. HPC can also be a federating objective, of cooperation between public and private partners, by creating an HPC-PPP to address the entire HPC ecosystem in EU.