Changing Approaches to HPC Systems

By Prof.dr.sc. Mario Kovac, European Processor Initiative, Chief Communication Officer

Prof.dr.sc. Mario Kovac, European Processor Initiative, Chief Communication Officer

The importance of high performance computing has been on the rise in the last years, and it is expected that this trend will not only continue but rapidly grow. Industry reports show that annual global IP traffic will soon reach several zettabytes, vast amounts of new devices collect and store data, scientists are exploring new computing approaches to solving global challenges, industry is changing the way products are designed, and we, as individuals, are constantly expecting more personalized services for the whole spectrum of aspects of our lives, such as better drugs that come faster to the market, have less side effects and cost less, faster diagnostic tools that help medical doctors perform better treatments, autonomous cars that can drive us more safely and more economically, and many other.

The need to collect and efficiently and timely process that vast amounts of data comes at a price. The existing approach to HPC systems design is no longer sustainable for the exascale era (exascale systems being defined as those capable of executing 1018 calculations per second). Energy efficiency is of enormous importance for sustainability of future exascale HPC systems.

Europe has recognized this global HPC challenge and has strategically initiated the efforts to support the next generation of computing and data infrastructures, a European project of the size of Airbus in the 1990s. EU efforts are synchronized in establishment of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, a legal and funding entity which will enable pooling of the Union's and national resources on High-Performance Computing to acquire, build and deploy in Europe the most powerful supercomputers of the world.

The design of a novel HPC processor family cannot be sustainable without thinking about possible additional markets that could support such long term activities

The European Processor Initiative (EPI) is one of the cornerstones of this EU HPC strategic plan. EPI gets together 23 partners from 10 European countries, with the aim to bring to the market a low power microprocessor and will ensure that the key competence of high-end chip design remains in Europe, a critical point for many application areas. Thanks to such new European technologies, European scientists and industry will be able to access exceptional levels of energy-efficient computing performance. This EPI efforts will benefit Europe's scientific leadership, industrial competitiveness, engineering skills and know-how and the society as whole, as recognized by high EU officials.

The design of a novel HPC processor family cannot be sustainable without thinking about possible additional markets that could support such long term activities. Thus, EPI will cover other areas such as the automotive sector, ensuring the overall economic viability of the initiative.

Current main trends driving the innovations in automotive industry include introduction of autonomous driving (class 4 and 5) and the ‘Connected Car’ infrastructure. New autonomous vehicle E/E-architectures require computing platforms able to execute complex vehicle perception algorithms that include modelling of the surrounding environment, sensor/imaging processing, data fusion, low-latency deep machine learning for object classification and behavior prediction with seamless, dependable and secure interaction between mobile high performance embedded computing and stationary server-based high performance computing.