Kick-off of 10 Centres of Excellence in HPC to support the transition towards exascale

These Centres of Excellence will develop and scale up existing computing codes towards exascale performance. Adapting existing applications to exascale computing capability requires significant changes to already existing applications. In some cases, application codes can no longer run on exascale or post-exascale systems without a complete rethink or a substantial code rewrite. The Centres of Excellence will support this transition in collaboration with HPC users and experts in order to ensure that future exascale EuroHPC systems are accessible to European researchers and industries and address current scientific, industrial and societal challenges.  

The new Centres of Excellence cover a diverse range of applications and use cases, including climate and weather, drug development, astrophysics and cosmology, plasma science and engineering, and will update and develop codes in each area. The most prominent codes, or flagship codes, developed by the Centres of Excellence will be deployed on all EuroHPC supercomputers and will be made available for European scientists and the broader European HPC community. 

The 10 Centres of Excellence selected through the call are the following:  

• Centre of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE-2P) covers earth science with a focus on earthquakes, seismic, tomography, tsunamis, magnetohydrodynamics, physical volcanology, geodynamics, and glacier hazards. Those topics are addressed by artificial intelligence, machine learning, simulation, uncertainty quantification, and neuronal networks. 
• Centre of Excellence for Computational Biomolecular Research (BioExcel-3) addresses life science, especially biomolecular research, drug development, and molecular dynamics, by using simulation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. 
• HPC and Big Data Technologies for Global Challenges (HiDALGO2) tackles global challenges that affect both the society and environment such as the air quality in urban agglomerations, energy efficiency of buildings, renewable energy sources, the spread of wildfires, and meteo-hydrological forecasting using computational fluid dynamics, high-performance data analytics, and artificial intelligence. 
• Centre of Excellence in Exascale-Oriented Application Co-design and Delivery for Multiscale Simulations (MultiXscale) focuses on software development: performance, productivity, and portability with use cases on helicopter design and certification for civil transport, battery applications for the sustainable energy transition, ultrasound for non-invasive diagnostics, and biomedical applications. 
• Centre of Excellence for Engineering Applications (EXCELLERAT P2) contributes to engineering use cases, manufacturing, energy, and mobility, e.g., aircraft, rotors, emissions, aero-dynamics, and aero-acoustics. 
• Centre of Excellence in Simulation of Weather and Climate in Europe (ESIWACE3) addresses efficient and scalable simulations for earth system modeling, weather, and climate prediction. 
• Materials Design at the Exascale (MaX) is centered around quantum simulations of materials and therefore contributes to information technology, green energy, health, supporting experimentation at large-scale, and manufacturing. 
• Scalable Parallel and distributed Astrophysical Codes for Exascale (SPACE) focuses on astrophysics and cosmology with the help of numerical simulations. 
• Plasma Exascale-Performance Simulations Centre of Excellence (Plasma-PEPSC) supports plasma science, focusing on magnetic confinement fusion, industrial plasmas, medical applications, basic plasma experiments, plasma accelerators, laser-plasma interactions, high energy density physics/ laboratory astrophysics, space physics, and astrophysics. 
• Center of Excellence for Exascale CFD (CEEC) focuses on engineering, aeronautic, and atmospheric engineering topics such as shock- boundary layer interaction and buffet on wings at the edge of the flight envelope, high fidelity aeroelastic simulation, topology optimization of static mixers, localised erosion of an offshore wind turbine foundation, simulation of atmospheric boundary layer flows, merchant ship hull in model scale. 

For more details, see the rest of the press release from the EuroHPC JU .

Note that this excerpt from the EuroHPC JU press release is republished here with permission from the EuroHPC JU.