The recent HiPEAC Conference in Barcelona brought together a remarkable convergence of expertise and innovation in high-performance computing (HPC). Between January 20-22, 2025, workshops organized by 16 European Centres of Excellence (CoEs) tackled the pivotal transition from petascale to exascale computing, showcasing the collaborative power of the European HPC community.

Women Leading HPC

The workshops were designed not only to address technical challenges but also to defy norms in a field where the contributions from women and people from historically marginalized backgrounds often go unnoticed. From early-career researchers to established leaders, the speakers represented the depth and diversity of talent shaping the present and future of HPC.

Marta García-Gasulla, one of the main organizers of the workshops and a researcher at the POP3 Centre of Excellence with her presentation on lessons learned and challenges in assessing European HPC codes. // Photo by Elisabetta Boella.

ChEESE researchers on HiPEAC

Alejandra Guerrero, ChEESE researcher from GEO3BCN-CSIC presented on ash fallout assessment in the HPC era, highlighting the role of advanced computational tools in natural hazard research.

Arnau Folch, ChEESE PI from GEO3BCN-CSIC, contributed to the roundtable on the future challenges of HPC alongside other prominent leaders.

Photos: Elisabetta Boella (E4) & Rosa Rodríguez (BSC-CNS)

A Platform for Collaboration

The workshops brought together projects addressing varied domains like climate, energy, and materials science, reinforcing the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration. The event emphasized the strategic importance of sharing expertise, as seen in sessions on EuroHPC CoEs’ collective roadmap and enhanced access to HPC training through initiatives like CASTIEL2.

As HPC advances toward exascale capabilities, events like the HiPEAC conference reaffirm the critical role of collaboration across institutions, disciplines, and borders. This gathering demonstrated the collective capacity of Europe’s research community to address some of the most complex scientific and societal challenges of our time.

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FocusCoE at EuroHPC Summit Week 2022

With the support of the FocusCoE project, almost all European HPC Centres of Excellence (CoEs) participated once again in the EuroHPC Summit Week (EHPCSW) this year in Paris, France: the first EHPCSW in person since 2019’s event in Poland. Hosted by the French HPC agency Grand équipement national de calcul intensif (GENCI), the conference was organised by Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), the European Technology Platform for High-Performance Computing (ETP4HPC), The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), and the European Commission (EC).As usual, this year’s event gathered the main European HPC stakeholders from technology suppliers and HPC infrastructures to scientific and industrial HPC users in Europe.

At the workshop on the European HPC ecosystem on Tuesday 22 March at 14:45, where the diversity of the ecosystem was presented around the Infrastructure, Applications, and Technology pillars, project coordinator Dr. Guy Lonsdale from Scapos talked about FocusCoE and the CoEs’ common goal.

Later that day from 16:30 until 18:00h, the FocusCoE project hosted a session titled “European HPC CoEs: perspectives for a healthy HPC application eco-system and Exascale” involving most of the EU CoEs. The session discussed the key role of CoEs in the EuroHPC application pillar, focussing on their impact for building a vibrant, healthy HPC application eco-system and on perspectives for Exascale applications. As described by Dr. Andreas Wierse on behalf of EXCELLERAT, “The development is continuous. To prepare companies to make good use of this technology, it’s important to start early. Our task is to ensure continuity from using small systems up to the Exascale, regardless of whether the user comes from a big company or from an SME”.

Keen interest in the agenda was also demonstrated by attendees from HPC related academia and industry filling the hall to standing room only. In light of the call for new EU HPC Centres of Excellence and the increasing return to in-person events like EHPCSW, the high interest in preparing the EU for Exascale has a bright future.

FocusCoE Hosts Intel OneAPI Workshop for the EU HPC CoEs

On March 2, 2022 FocusCoE hosted Intel for a workshop introducing the oneAPI development environment. In all, over 40 researchers representing the EU HPC Centres of Excellence (CoEs)were able to attend the single day workshop to gain an overview of OneAPI. The 8 presenters from Intel gave presentations through the day covering the OneAPI vision, design, toolkits, a use case with GROMACS (which is already used by some of the EU HPC CoEs), and specific tools for migration and debugging.

Launched in 2019, the Intel OneAPI cross-industry, open, standards-based unified programming model is being designed to deliver a common developer experience across accelerator architectures. With the time saved designing for specific accelerators, OneAPI is intended to enable faster application performance, more productivity, and greater innovation. As summarized on Intel’s OneAPI website, “Apply your skills to the next innovation, and not to rewriting software for the next hardware platform.” Given the work that EU HPC CoEs are currently doing to optimise codes for Exascale HPC systems, any tools that make this process faster and more efficient can only boost CoEs capacity for innovation and preparedness for future heterogeneous systems.

The OneAPI industry initiative is also encouraging collaboration on the oneAPI specification and compatible oneAPI implementations. To that end, Intel is investing time and expertise into events like this workshop to give researchers the knowledge they need not only to use but help improve OneAPI. The presenters then also make themselves available after the workshop to answer questions from attendees on an ongoing basis. Throughout our event, participants were continuously able to ask questions and get real-time answers as well as offers for further support from software architects, technical consulting engineers, and the researcher who presented a use case. Lastly, the full video and slides from presentations are available below for any CoEs who were unable to attend or would like a second look at the detailed presentations.

Intel HW roadmap and Architecture Specifics

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oneAPI workshop

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Introduction to heterogenous programming with Data Parallel C++

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InterDPC++ Compatibility Tool

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Intel oneAPI Performance Analysis Tools

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Intel Distribution for GDB* A Cross-Architecture Application Debugger

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7 Videos