Networking Activities

HPC-Europa2 provides three complementary Networking Activities:
NA1: Coordination of the TA activity;
NA2: Facilitating the HPC Ecosystem;
NA3: Training, Consultancy and Communication of the HPC Culture.

NA1, is the co-ordination of the Transnational Access programme at consortium level, encouraging co-operation between the project partners to ensure that the visitor experience at each of the seven centres is of a consistently high standard. Other tasks within NA1 include managing publicity for the programme, organising the selection meetings, and providing feedback to applicants. NA1 is led by the HPC-Europa team at EPCC, who have consolidated many years of experience in this area, having co-ordinated the Transnational Access activity since the start of the first HPC-Europa programme in 2004.

NA2 is in charge of all the gluing aspects external to the project, facilitating and cooperating in the establishment of a solid and effective HPC Ecosystem at European level. NA2 will assure the eradication and the visibility of the HPC-Europa brand to the scientific community around Europe and at world level. Moreover, NA2 will enlarge the user community involving a larger number of countries and research fields and groups. This aspect is not a matter of dissemination but involves a sustained effort to enlarge the user base, extending to new research disciplines and involving a larger number of countries in the access service. NA2 will reach their goals strictly cooperating with external projects and agencies to integrate and extend the HPC-Europa2 activity and methodologies to the HPC-Ecosystem.
NA2 will increment the presence of HPC-Europa2 in all european countries. For this, we have created the PoP, Point of Presence, were every country has a responsible partner for identification of new contacts, and the establishment of cooperation.
NA2 will provide experience and support for the evaluation process in the HPC area. For this purpose, special cooperation will be established with PRACE, for the future Tier-0 HPC systems, and with DEISA, for the current Tier-1 services. Progress update

NA3 will integrate and enhance the support to the users accessing to the HPC Facility. NA3 will operate for the benefit of the visitors, on the one hand improving the support, consultancy and training activities dedicated to HPC-Europa users and, on the other, improving the support of collaborative meeting tools based on existing infrastructures.
NA3 will facilitate the effective usage and exploitation of massive parallel architectures, ensuring the diffusion of the related know-how and competencies, sharing them between experts and introducing them to newcomers and beginners in the field.

The ensemble of these three Networking Activities will strongly enhance the access to the seven HPC Infrastructure and cooperate to fully consolidate HPC-Europa2 as a virtual European supercomputing meta centre at the service off the scientific communities, fostering a culture of co-operation between the partners of the project and the scientists accessing the HPC Infrastructure as a whole. Progress update