The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) participated to ISC 2024 from 13-16 May 2024 in Hamburg, Germany. ISC is the largest forum in Europe for HPC, high performance data analytics and AI/machine learning. This annual event brings together the international HPC community, providers and users from industry, public institutions and research organisations.

The EuroHPC JU booth was located centrally in the exhibition hall and welcomed several hundreds of visitor, who engaged in discussions with staff on the upcoming EuroHPC activities and opportunities. 

The stand also featured a presentation corner, where all our EuroHPC projects and Hosting Entities presented their work throughout the three days.

Conference Participation:

The EuroHPC JU participated in several sessions during the ISC 2024 conference. In particular, the EuroHPC JU's Executive Director Anders Dam Jensen spoke in a session dedicated to EuroHPC on Tuesday 14th May 2024: EuroHPC - Recent Initiatives, News and Use Cases on Europe's Leading Supercomputers. 

He was joined on stage by Sergi Girona of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Kristel Michielsen from Julich Supercomputing Centre, and Ioan Hadade of ECMWF, who presented the Destination Earth Initiative.

The EuroHPC JU was well represented throughout the conference programme, with several EuroHPC JU colleagues taking part in sessions such as: 

• European HPC Ecosystem - Updates and Gap Analysis
• Super(computing) Heroes
• Birds of a Feather: The missing 20%: Could the European HPC ecosystem supply and operate dedicated industrial-grade systems?
• Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC) Accelerating AI for Science
• Workshop on Readiness of HPC Extreme-scale Applications

If you were unable to attend ISC 2024 and would like to watch the main talks, you can still register for complimentary access to the recordings, here.

Workshop

On 16 May the EuroHPC JU also organised a workshop dedicated to AI for HPC: "Powering European AI with EuroHPC Supercomputers", divided in two sessions:

Panel 1 - Support of AI in HPC ecosystem

• EuroHPC AI access calls- Evangelos Floros, EuroHPC JU Head of Sector Infrastructure
• AI usages, software and environnement on EuroHPC systems- Lilit Axner, EuroHPC JU Programme Manager - Infrastructure
• Challenges: data management, HPC-AI uptake, heterogeneous architecture software stacks- Mladen Skelin, EuroHPC JU Programme Manager - Research & Innovation
• Q&A
• Presentation of the AI factories - Juan Pelegrin, Head of Sector HPC & Quantum Technology, DG Connect, European Commission
• AI support of NCCs- Laura Morselli,HPC specialist at EuroCC Italy & Solution Architect at CINECA
• Applications support including AI with the EPICURE project- Stéphane Requena, Director of Innovation & Technology at GENCI
• Panel discussion “Putting the puzzles together: How AI factories, AI support centre, Epicure and NCC fit with each other to support AI on HPC”

Panel 2 - AI ecosystem in Europe

• AI in Luxembourg Valentin PLUGARU, LuxProvide Chief Technology Officer
• AI in Norway Gunnar Bøe, CEO Sigma 2, National provider of HPC in Norway
• AI in Italy Laura Morselli, HPC specialist at EuroCC Italy & Solution Architect at CINECA
• AI in France Stéphane Requena, Director of Innovation & Technology at GENCI
• AI in UK Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director and Dean of Research Computing, The University of Edinburgh
• Panel discussion "Current challenges of HPC to accommodate AI and future needs of AI"