PRACE Workshop – Kick-off of the Scientific and Innovation Case 2024 Edition

Friday Oct 20, 2023, 9:00 AM → 4:30 PM Europe/Paris

La Chancellerie des Universités de Paris

PRACE is kick starting a new edition of its Scientific and Innovation Case with a workshop, where visionaries, innovators and leading scientists from across Europe and beyond will converge to sketch the future of scientific research and innovation relying on HPC and its related technologies.

The workshop will present the future structure of PRACE after its PRACE 3 evolution, and will also include insightful keynote presentations, engaging discussions, and collaborative dialogues among esteemed peers.

The main focus of this workshop lies a pivotal objective: to usher in a new era of computational excellence. We will embark on an ambitious journey to revisit and reimagine the case for the use of High Performance Computing (HPC) – today with Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing and other advanced computing technologies – to support Science and Industry endeavours. Building upon the foundation laid by "The Scientific Case for Computing in Europe 2018 – 2026," a seminal work published by PRACE in October 2018, PRACE sets itself the target to publish a new edition in 2024.

This objective is perfectly aligned with the mission of PRACE to represent the interest and identify the needs of users of HPC and related technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Cloud Computing, Data Science) in Europe and to pursue actions to enable high-impact research and innovation across all disciplines and industrial applications, thereby enhancing European scientific, technological and economic competitiveness for the benefit of society. It materializes the first of the actions that PRACE will take as an Association of Users and HPC Centres in Europe.

The participants will play a central role in shaping the content of this forthcoming publication. By pooling their collective expertise, they will craft a visionary document making the case for the continued availability of cutting-edge HPC infrastructure and services to empower researchers and innovators alike.

This document will serve as a guide for European and National funding agencies and policymakers, and together we will fortify and expand the competitive edge of European research and innovation, harnessing emerging technology infrastructure such as HPC, Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, High-Performance Data Analytics, Data Analytics, and other transformative technologies.

Join us as we embark on this exciting journey towards a future where research and innovation are equipped with the tools needed to pioneer groundbreaking discoveries and preface a new era of European research and innovative products and services.

Together, we will forge a path that ensures Europe's enduring legacy in the global landscape of science, technology, opportunity and innovation.

Attendance to this event is free of charge but registration is a strict prerequisite and will be granted on a first come, first served basis within the capacity of the event venue.

9:00 AM → 10:00 AM Registration

You are kindly requested to notify late arrival as comment at registration time

10:00 AM → 10:10 AM Welcome

Speaker: Prof. Constantia Alexandrou (University of Cyprus)

10:10 AM → 10:40 AM Setting the scene

• PRACE 3
• History of Scientific Cases

Speaker: Mr Serge Bogaerts (Managing Director PRACE aisbl)

10:40 AM → 10:50 AM Discussion

10:50 AM → 11:20 AM Understanding Matter: Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics in the era of Exascale and Beyond

This talk will discuss the role of lattice QCD calculations in searches for new physics and understanding the nature and structure of matter at subatomic scales. The scientific case for exascale (and beyond) computing will be described and some of the new, as well as persistent, numerical simulation challenges will be outlined.

Speaker: Prof. Sinead Ryan (Chair of Theoretical High Energy Physics and Head, School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland)

11:20 AM → 11:30 AM Discussion

11:30 AM → 12:00 PM From processor interconnection to service integration

To be able to address aircraft programs challenges, technologies and market evolutions, we have to adapt HPC environments. From cabling supercomputers, we had to adapt our expertise, to become service integration taking into account new technologies, market evolutions, and collaboration environments

Speaker: Mr Vincent Galinier (IM Enterprise & Innovation Architect, iStudio Leader, Airbus, France)

12:00 PM → 12:10 PM Discussion

12:10 PM → 1:10 PM Lunch Break

1:10 PM → 1:40 PM Understanding and designing matter and materials at the exascale and beyond

As we enter the exascale and post-exascale era, I will discuss some of the successes and perspectives in understanding fundamental phenomena at the nanoscale and designing materials and properties that are critical for technology. I will also discuss key challenges and huge opportunities that arise, especially at interfaces between computational and experimental scientific communities.

Speaker: Prof. Elisa Molinari (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and CNR-Nanoscience Institute, Modena, Italy)

1:40 PM → 1:50 PM Discussion

1:50 PM → 2:20 PM Training large language models: workloads and challenges

Training large language models maxes out capacities of modern GPUs as well as modern fabrics. I'll go into the details of a typical large language model training workload, how compute is distributed, how much data is transfered and how compute and communications are interleaved. I'll describe how different balance of compute vs bandwidth can bring different training speeds in practical large language model training. I'll conclude with the challenges associated with training the next generation of models, and how they change the communication patterns.

Speaker: Dr Timothée Lacroix (CTO Mistral AI)

2:20 PM → 2:30 PM Discussion

2:30 PM → 2:50 PM JUPITER Europe’s first exascale computer

JUPITER, the “Joint Undertaking pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research”, is on its way to provide Exascale computing capabilities to the European HPC and AI community and beyond. The Jülich Supercomputing Centre, together with the EuroHPC JU, joined their efforts to implement one of the most powerful supercomputers world-wide.

Within this talk we will show the journey that JSC started more than a decade ago to bring the successful Modular Supercomputing Architecture, implemented first in the DEEP projects and prototypes, to a production level. We will detail the software and a few hardware characteristics of the current JSC flagship system JUWELS that we see as a blueprint for the system architecture for JUPITER. In addition we provide details about the procurement process, in particular benchmarks, as well as the high-level system architecture of JUPITER.

Speaker: Benedikt von St. Vieth (Foschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich Supercomputing Centre)

2:50 PM → 3:00 PM Discussion

3:00 PM → 4:00 PM Panel Discussion: Upcoming challenges for Science and Innovation in using Advanced Computing Technologies

Panel Members:
- Prof. Jean-Philip Piquemal
- Prof. Sinead Ryan
- Prof. Nicola Marzari
- Andrea R. Beccari

Speaker: Prof. Lee Margetts (University Manchester)

4:00 PM → 4:30 PM Next Steps