HPC Core Technologies, Programming Environments and Algorithms for Extreme Parallelism and Extreme Data Applications

Specific challenge: The challenge is to achieve, by 2020, the full range of technological capabilities needed for delivering a broad spectrum of extreme scale HPC systems. The designs of these systems need to respond to critical demands of energy efficiency, new delivery models, as well as to the requirements of new types of applications, including extreme-data applications. New methodologies, environments and tools for extremely-parallel and data-intensive programming are needed to achieve code quality and portability, reduce software development and maintenance costs while maximally exploiting underlying system capabilities (e.g. exploiting millions of cores in an energy-aware way). New mathematics and new algorithms are needed for ultra-scalable algorithms with predictable performance for existing or visionary applications, including data-intensive and extreme data applications in scientific areas such as physics, chemistry, biology, life sciences, materials, climate, geosciences, etc.

Scope: Proposals shall target one of the following subtopics:

a)             HPC core technologies and architectures, addressing one or more of the HPC core technologies (processors, memory, interconnect and storage) and their optimal integration into extreme scale HPC systems, platforms and prototypes. Proposals should have a co-design approach driven by ambitious applications and in close cooperation with the scientific disciplines and stakeholders concerned, aiming at radical overall system performance improvement while at the same time addressing issues such as: a holistic understanding of energy efficiency across the full HPC system architecture; I/O, storage and data-throughput capabilities especially for big-data applications; radical scalability, concurrency, locality and resilience in the presence of millions of cores. A minimum of 60% of the available budget for this topic will be allocated to research under this part.

b)             Programming methodologies, environments, languages and tools: development of new programming models, domain-specific languages, programming paradigms, visualisation and data-analysis tools to facilitate the effective exploitation of the full system capabilities (including energy management) of the emerging large- and extreme scale systems, in particular for extreme parallelism and extreme data applications.

c)             APIs and system software for future extreme scale systems: New APIs and the corresponding efficient, flexible and scalable exascale system software for managing extreme scale systems, taking into account extreme parallelism, extreme data, energy consumption and resilience. Proposals are expected to include communication and dissemination activities towards relevant standards bodies and research programmes. It is expected that proposals on this point have the critical mass, if necessary beyond Europe, to strategically coordinate the API work in the exascale stack.

d)            New mathematical and algorithmic approaches for existing or emerging applications on extreme scale systems. Work proposed should include energy-aware algorithms and maximally exploit the projected characteristics of exascale-class systems. Specific issues are quantification of uncertainty and noise, multiscale and extreme data. Software engineering for extreme parallelism should be addressed. Open source development is privileged.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 2 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Under part a) of the scope also larger proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 8 million can be envisaged. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Collaborations with Russian partners that can contribute outstanding scientific excellence in mathematics and algorithms for HPC is welcomed. These partners will however not be funded under this call.

Expected impact:

•                Contribution to the realisation of the ETP4HPC Strategic Research Agenda, thus strengthened European research and industrial leadership in HPC technologies.

•                Covering important segments of the broader and/or emerging HPC markets, especially extreme-scale HPC systems.

•                Impact on standards bodies and other relevant international research programmes and frameworks.

•                European excellence in mathematics and algorithms for extreme parallelism and extreme data applications to boost research and innovation in scientific areas such as physics, chemistry, biology, life sciences, materials, climate, geosciences, etc.

Type of action: Research and Innovation Actions.