PERIN – doubling Portuguese presence in European Programmes

High Performance Computing in Portugal

The role of the Innovation Agency

Eduardo Maldonado

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN EUROPE

• MARCH: In April 2016 in the European Cloud Initiative – part of the EU's strategy

to digitise European industry – the Commission urged Member States to step up

cooperation in HPC to boost Europe's scientific capabilities and industrial

competitiveness. It also committed to develop a high-performance computing

ecosystem based on European technology, including low power chips.

2016

THE GOAL IS TO HAVE EXASCALE SUPERCOMPUTERS BASED ON EUROPEAN

TECHNOLOGY IN THE GLOBAL TOP 3 BY 2022.

A NEED HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED!

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN EUROPE

• MARCH: The European Declaration on High-Performance Computing was

launched in Rome, signed by European countries committed to upgrading

European computing power.

2017

Signatory countries

The EuroHPC declaration was launched on March 2017 at

the Digital Day in Rome, and was signed by seven Member

States: France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the

Netherlands, PORTUGAL and Spain.

A POLITICAL INTENTION WAS VOICED!

THE EUROHPC FAST TRACK NEGOTIATION PROCESS

The strong political will made the difference!

Portugal engaged in the process from day 1!

The team was defined!

A strategy was set!

2017 2018

SETTING THE SCENE FOR PT DIGITAL TRANSITION

An integrated public policy initiative aimed at enhancing digital competences

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL - STRATEGY

SECTORS

HEALTH

EARTH

MOBILITY SOCIAL

SCIENTIFIC

INFRASCTRUCTURES – PEOPLE – INFO-STRUCTURE

It considers close international collaborative actions and has been designed to promote all areas of advanced scientific computing, and to mobilize effective and diverse data processing between industry and academia.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN PORTUGAL - STRATEGY

By 2030, Portugal will have a knowledge intensive labour market with a strong community

of forefront companies producing and exporting AI technologies supported by an academia

involved in high-level, fundamental and applied research. AI technologies will be easily

available to promote the efficiency and quality of all activities, including SMEs, public services

and every citizen. The labour force will be highly qualified and Portugal will be at the

forefront of AI Education for all. AI will improve the quality of services and the efficiency of

processes while guarantying fairness, wellbeing and quality of life.

Competence Centres in Avanced Computing (CC)Operational Centres of Advanced Computing (OC)Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)

NATIONAL NETWORK FOR ADVANCED COMPUTING

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – WHY?

BELLA (Building the Europe Link with Latin America)provides for the long-term interconnectivity needs ofEuropean and Latin American research and educationcommunities.

BELLA is being implemented by a Consortium ofRegional Research and Education Networks GÉANT(Europe) and RedCLARA (Latin America) and theNational Research and Education Networks (NREN) ofBrazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Italy,

Portugal and Spain.

Minho Advanced Computing Center (MACC), a supercomputing infrastructure at the service of Portuguese scientific community2017

The MACC is a partnership between the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and theUniversity of Minho (UMinho), created in 2017, with the following objectives:

Support and encourage research and innovation in High PerformanceComputing (HPC) systems codesign, including implementation, optimizationand exploitation - priorities of the EuroHPC and HPC-EPI initiatives;

Promote the creation, expansion and consolidation of research andinnovation groups in priority scientific domains for Portugal and Europe,which require large-scale digital simulations and intensive use of largevolumes of data;

Provide advanced computing resources for research, higher educationinstitutions, academic entrepreneurship initiatives, publicadministration, business, as well as for curating, managing andprocessing data and machine learning processes.

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – HOW?

• JUNE: selection of eight sites in eight participating countries to host its first

supercomputers: three pre-exascale machines (capable of 1017 operations per

second) and five petascale machines (capable of 1016 operations per second).

2019

EU FUNDING: 7M€

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – HOW?

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – HOW?

• DEUCALION SUPERCOMPUTER installation at MACC. Project approved bythe European Commission under the Euro HPC initiative. EU contribution:7M €

• Guaranteed BSC SUPERCOMPUTER’ time of the to PT entities2020

Minho Advanced Computing Center (MACC), a supercomputing infrastructure at the service of Portuguese scientific community

2018• BOB SUPERCOMPUTOR in installation (given to FCT by UTAustin's Texas

Advanced Computing Center (TACC), under an international partnershipbetween UTAustin and Portugal).

• Signed a protocol between Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)with MACC.

Iberian AdvancedComputingNetwork– RICA

The European Processor Initiative (EPI) aims to design and implement a roadmap for a newfamily of low-power European processors for extreme scale computing, high-performanceBig-Data and a range of emerging applications.

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – HOW?

ICT market in Portugal will exceed 8 billion

euros this year

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – WHY?

…

3 UNICORN COMPANIES

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – WHY?

• Azores Spaceport

• Low-cost space launch facilities

• Low orbit Earth observation satellites

• Focus on North Atlantic (e.g., plastics, fisheries, ship location, etc.)

• Promote the use of space data (big data) in commercial applications

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – WHY?

AIR Centre is an international distributed scientific network to

share science and technology responding to the Global Atlantic

scale challenges, enhancing the sharing of scientific & technical

resources and creating sustainable local value.

The Centre integrates SPACE, ATMOSPHERE, OCEAN, CLIMATE,

ENERGY and DATA SCIENCE to address the Global Challenges in

the Atlantic Ocean, to deliver value, benefits and sustainable

development to the marine and coastal ecosystem and people.

DATA SCIENCE and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE for space-climate-ocean sciences integration and economic development

THE ROLE OF ANI

• Part of the policymaking team;

• Mobilise the stakeholders to use the HPC facilities;• Promotion;

• In general;

• In special sectors (AI, Manufacturing, Health services – digital imaging, Space data, etc.)

• Project financing;

• Design specific instruments (in addition to horizontal open calls);

• Helping set up competence centres (inc. Digital Innovation Hubs);

• Coordination between Science and Economy;

• Monitoring the national innovation ecosystem;

• Interface with EC on H2020/HE (namely, Innovation Ecosystems part of the EIC pillar)

Portugal at the frontline for fully autonomous driving

Since 2015, Portugal has been involved in the development of the positioning and movement sensor of the vehicle.

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN PORTUGAL – AN EXAMPLE

PERIN – doubling Portuguese presence in European Programmes

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