Societal, scientific and economic needs are the drivers for the next generation of HPC - computing with exascale performance (computers capable of performing 10 to the power of 18 floating point operations per second).
The European Commission recognised the need for an EU-level policy in HPC to optimise national and European investments, addressing the entire HPC ecosystem and adopted its HPC Strategy on 15 February 2012.
The implementation of the European HPC strategy in Horizon 2020 is supported through three pillars working in synergy:
These pillars are complemented with awareness raising, training, education and skills development in HPC.
A strong cooperation with the HPC stakeholders is key for the success of the HPC strategy. A contractual Public-Private Partnership on HPC (cPPP on HPC) was established in January 2014 between the Commission and the European Technology Platform for HPC (ETP4HPC) to develop an ambitious R&I strategy. The cPPP covers the pillars (1) and (3) above.
Check the applications of High-Performance Computing and what the EC does within its HPC strategy in this infographic.
HPC-related actions were called under 2 different domains of the "Excellent Science" pillar of Horizon 2020: