Co-designing Extreme Scale Demonstrators

Specific Challenge:

To demonstrate in operational environments the successful integration of technology building blocks developed in previous R&I actions into world-class Extreme Scale Demonstrators. The challenges of power efficiency, resiliency and scalability of these systems require a strong co-design approach driven by ambitious applications involving technology suppliers, system integrators, supercomputing infrastructure providers and user communities, as well as ambitious HPC and extreme-data application owners or providers.

Scope:

Proposals are expected to address the research, co-design, integration, validation and experimentation of extreme scale computing systems driven by a set of ambitious extreme data and HPC applications. EsDs should have the potential of being commercialised, operating in mode close to service delivery to users, and should integrate to a large extent technologies developed in projects funded by FP7, Horizon 2020 or other R&D actions in Europe. In particular, proposals will demonstrate how the building blocks developed in the FETHPC projects and other relevant actions supported in Horizon 2020 (e.g. the LEIT-ICT low-power microprocessor technologies) are integrated and leveraged in the EsDs (e.g. architectural work, software and parallel programming environments, etc.). EsDs are expected to demonstrate scalability up to exascale-class levels with specific design points and performance/power targets (e.g., design point target of 500 Petaflops to 1 Exaflop).

Each proposal should follow a 2-phase approach: Phase A consisting of development, integration and testing of a HW/SW system with a sufficient size to enable evaluation and validation of the design and that is fully usable by the end of this phase; and Phase B dedicated to deployment, use for relevant applications and validation in operational environments for real users. It is critical that the EsDs achieve well specified performance/power targets in both phases using a representative set of ambitious applications. These applications will address Big Data and extreme scale computing challenges combining fast response times, and advanced Big Data analytics and High-Performance Computing techniques.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 20 and 40 million would allow this area to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Wherever appropriate, actions should seek synergies and co-financing from relevant national / regional research and innovation programmes in line with already existing smart specialisation priorities.

All grants under this topic will be subject to Article 30.3 of the grant agreement (Commission right to object to transfers or licensing).

Expected Impact:

  • Strengthening the competitiveness and leadership of European industry & science, in particular of the European technology supply
  • Proof-of-principle for pre-exascale machines addressing strategic HPC and Big-Data applications
  • New operational environments and capacity available for users with extreme-data application requirements
  • Contribution to the realisation of the ETP4HPC Strategic Research Agenda
  • Maximising the impact and leveraging the results of European R&D projects (in particular FETHPC and related LEIT-ICT actions) into operational extreme scale demonstrators.
Types of action: RIA Research and Innovation action
DeadlineModel: 
Planned opening date:
single-stage
26 July 2018
Deadline: 14 November 2018

Source: Horizon 2020 – The European Commission