Our online Bird-of-a-Feather session was held on 17 November. It gathered 37 attendees, including five of the ETP4HPC team. First, Franz-Josef Pfreundt of Fraunhofer showcased the processor technology being developed by the European Processor Initiative project as an example of a solution in which the European HPC expertise of the provision of energy-efficient technoloy (both hardware and software) could serve other IT areas. Then Daniel Cesarini of Cineca introduced the challenges associated with running an HPC site and with application development.
The discussion was moderated by Maike Gilliot and Andreas Wierse, with a significant contribution of Pascale Rosse-Laurent. The role of the ETP4HPC White Paper on this topic was emphasised.
Some of the questions and conclusions to be addressed are:
- Reusing the heat generated to heat cities (what about the summer?)
- Wind turbines as an example of where supercomputig could be located
- Focusing on making computing efficient rather than on the efficiency of energy sources
- Reusing gear made obsolete by other companies
- A holisitic approach – how to get everyone onboard?
This discussion will continue within ETP4HPC’s SRA/TCI effort.
The slides used are available here.
