The EuroHPC Summit Week 2021 (EHPCSW) took place as a fully digital event this year, evoking the spirit of the fast-paced domain of discovery and invention enabled by high-performance computing that continues to gather momentum even as the world itself has had to drastically change pace. Now, we are happy to bring you the EHPCSW 2021 Executive Summary, providing full coverage and analysis of the latest in the world of European supercomputing.
Read the EHPCSW 2021 Executive Summary here.
This year’s EuroHPC Summit Week (EHPCSW) brought a new feel with it, being the first fully virtual version of the event and bringing in speakers from every aspect of the high-performance computing (HPC) universe to show the vibrancy of the community and the many areas of everyday life that it now involves itself in.
High on the agenda this year was the huge role that high-performance computing has played in enabling the many urgent threads of research related to COVID-19 over the past year, and this was reflected in a whole afternoon worth of talks and discussions related to this work. As well as this, a talk from consulting firm Mercer outlined the impacts of the pandemic on different demographics working in the tech industry.
Beyond this, talks on artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data helped to illustrate the paradigm shift that is happening before our very eyes in the way that science is being done. Methods for making HPC greener were presented and discussed, as was the changing landscape of the European computing ecosystem and the latest goings on at CERN’s giant physics experiment – the Large Hadron Collider.
The first virtual EHPCSW
Like every event in recent times, EHPCSW 2021 was forced to adapt itself to the ever-changing circumstances of a world in the grip of a pandemic. Originally planned to take place in Porto, the decision to move online was taken with a heavy heart but proved nothing less than a great success, with three times as many participants as any edition before.
Providing an engaging mixture of live talks, Q&As, large panel discussions on the future of HPC as well as smaller meeting places to talk more in depth with some of the speakers, the online version of EHPCSW in some ways was able to surpass its predecessors. Although in some situations nothing can beat meeting in the real world, the flexibility provided by the online event meant that many who may not have considered travelling were able to drop in on the few sessions that were relevant to them.
As sad as we are that we were not able to welcome you all to the beautiful city of Porto, we hope that this executive summary of the event helps to bring some of the excitement of a real event to you as you read. As we have all found out over the past year or so, the world finds ways to keep going even when times are tough. Looking back at all the exciting talks from this year’s event it seems that the world of HPC is much the same!
About EuroHPC Summit Week 2021
The EuroHPC Summit Week (EHPCSW) 2021 gathered the main European HPC stakeholders from technology suppliers and HPC infrastructures to scientific and industrial HPC users in Europe. As in previous years, PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, organised the eighth edition of its Scientific and Industrial Conference (PRACEdays21) within the EHPCSW 2021. PRACEdays21 brought together experts from academia and industry who presented their advancements in HPC-supported science and engineering.
The organisers of the EHPCSW 2021 are the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) and the European Technology Platform for High-Performance Computing (ETP4HPC). The European Commission (EC) will represent the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) in the organisation of the conference. The logistical organisation is supported by a local host: for the 2021 edition this will be Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – Computação Cientifica Nacional (FCT-FCCN).
