Success Story: Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany introduce EuroCC to the international community

NCC presenting the Success Story:

EuroCC Austria – National Competence Centre for Supercomputing, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: eurocc-austria.at

Organisations & Codes Involved:

EuroCC Czech Republic – represented by IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center at VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, www.it4i.cz

EuroCC Germany – represented by SICOS BW GmbH, sicos-bw.de

FFG – Austrian Research Promotion Agency, www.ffg.at

Vienna Business Agency, viennabusinessagency.at

Full list of organizers: 2021.b2bsoftwaredays.com

Topic(s) of collaboration:

High-Performance Computing (HPC) for digital businesses and industrial innovators: the workshop of EuroCC National Competence Centres (NCCs) from Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany took place on May 12, 2021 at the 6th International SoftwareDays – the biggest software b2b event in central Europe. The speakers Andreas Wierse, Harald Grill, Markus Stöhr, and Tomáš Karásek presented the EuroCC initiative to support European users in the uptake of HPC and provided valuable insights into the supercomputing infrastructure, successful HPC applications and benefits that help solve complex problems, e.g. in software development, engineering and manufacturing.

Results of collaboration:

The workshop on High-Performance Computing attracted 60 participants from more than ten countries and facilitated productive networking with the b2b sector. In essence, it became a great platform for promoting the uptake of HPC, explaining the European HPC landscape to the international audience and offering access to the technical know-how available in AT/CZ/DE in particular.

Apart from conducting the joint workshop, each speaker held one-on-one meetings with industrial stakeholders. For the NCCs this proved to be a great opportunity to forge meaningful connections with potential HPC users, and for the latter to gain a deeper insight into general as well as specific advanced computing solutions for their businesses. 

Thanks to the organisers of the event, everyone interested in the webinar can access its recording online: https://lnkd.in/eATtdqn.

What did you manage to do together that you could not have done separately:

Being part of the EuroCC network, which extends over 33 countries, often proves challenging for participating NCCs when it comes to communication with each other and gaining insight into the processes of fellow competence centres. Joining forces for SoftwareDays thus became an excellent opportunity for the NCCs AT/CZ/DE to exchange perspectives and establish a closer relationship. Moreover, the joint appearance surely helped to convey the interconnected nature of the large and intricate system of European HPC initiatives including EuroCC, CASTIEL, EuroHPC JU, and PRACE.

The collaboration between AT/CZ/DE was not only a desired undertaking but also a necessary one, since the participation at SoftwareDays is only possible for entities with an international outreach. Therefore, the three NCCs accomplished a multifarious task pushing forward both internal and external goals, coming out as one and offering threefold value to the public.

Going forward, it would be advantageous to have NCCs collaborating with each other on a regular basis — a practice that aims to benefit international stakeholders as well as EuroCC, in line with the objectives of the project and the values of the European Union which promote international cooperation, exchange of expertise, and technological literacy.

SUCCESS STORY # HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Keywords: High-Performance Computing, HPC, Supercomputing, Engineering, Software Optimisation, EuroCC
  • Industry sector: IT/HPC systems, services & software providers, manufacturing & engineering, natural science
  • Technology: HPC, HPDA, AI

Contact:

  • Julia Wimmer, julia.wimmer@tuwien.ac.at (EuroCC Austria – National Competence Centre for Supercomputing, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, eurocc-austria.at)

This project has received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 951732. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Republic of North Macedonia, Iceland, Montenegro