About the EXDCI / EXDCI-2 projects

EXDCI-2

Through the joint action of PRACE and ETP4HPC, EXDCI-2 mobilises the European HPC stakeholders. The project builds upon the achievements of EXDCI and will continue its participation in the support of the European HPC Ecosystem with two main goals:

• Development and advocacy of a competitive European HPC Exascale Strategy by supporting the implementation of a common European HPC strategy, open to synergistic areas including High Performance Data Analytics (HPDA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The expertise of the partners and stakeholders will permit to elaborate a transversal prospective vision.
• Coordination of the stakeholder community for European HPC at the Exascale through joint community structuring and synchronisation. This entails ensuring EXDCI-2 stakeholder representation in the main development of the European HPC eco-system towards Exascale, such as:
  • The development of relationships with other ecosystems including upstream technologies as photonics and electronics, High Performance Embedded Computing (HiPEAC) and Big Data (BDVA)
  • In the context of the upcoming European Data Infrastructure (EDI) a road mapping activity toward future converged HPC, HPDA and AI needs and new services from PRACE users communities and CoE
  • The continuation of BDEC activities, for international participation of European stakeholders on the integration from edge computing to HPC, including Data Analytics and AI
  • The mapping and analysis of related national and international R&I research agendas

EXDCI-2 gives particular attention to creating synergies with the CoEs – for example with FocusCoE – and to building on the outcomes of FET HPC projects.

EXDCI achievements and legacy

Following the vision of the European Commission in HPC, the ecosystem is based on three pillars: HPC Technology Provision, HPC Infrastructure and HPC Application Resources.

EXDCI aimed to support the road-mapping, strategy-making and performance-monitoring activities of the eco-system, including building and maintaining relations with other international HPC activities and regions, or other communities (Big Data, IoT).

The EXDCI coordination has contributed to a much-increased momentum of HPC related activities and to the strategic goal of coordinating complementary stakeholder groups. The most significant achievements of the EXDCI project include:

• Expanding the European HPC worldwide
• Significantly developing relations between HPC stakeholders
• Widely associating stakeholders in joint road-mapping exercises
• Taking a leading role in the BDEC forum concerning HPC and Big Data convergence

As shown in the table below, the project summarizes its major achievements in three main pillars:

EXDCI paves the way towards a common European HPC strategy
Project acronym: European Extreme Data & Computing Initiative (EXDCI)	Collaboration	Strategic instruments	European HPC development
Start date: 01/09/2015 End date: 28/02/2018 Total budget: €2.5 milion   Project partners:   Objectives: EXDCI aims to support the road-mapping, strategy-making and performance-monitoring activities of the ecosystem.	Annual European HPC Summit Week Conference     Worldwide Big Data and Extreme-scale Computing conferences     HPC Extreme-scale Demonstrators: Prototypes of future HPC systems	PRACE Scientific Case: Roadmap for key scientific application challenges     Strategic Research Agenda: HPC technological European research roadmap     Pathways to Convergence: Extreme Computing and Big Data international roadmap     European HPC Programme impact assessment methodology	2017 Handbook of European HPC Projects     Promoting HPC careers: Job/training opportunities and case studies     Set of recommendations for SMEs and start-ups
The EXDCI project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 671558.

Many actions in EXDCI-2 build on the success of EXDCI, as well as actions that took place under the previous FP7 projects EESI and EESI2.

General Information

 

	EXDCI	EXDCI-2
Project Name	European eXtreme Data and Computing Initiative	European eXtreme Data and Computing Initiative - 2
Acronym	EXDCI	EXDCI-2
Project Type	CSA – Coordination & support action	CSA – Coordination & support action
Grant Agreement Number	671558	800957
Project Coordinator	PRACE	PRACE
Duration	30 months	30 months
Number of Partners	2	4
Project Cost	€ 2.5m	€ 2.44m
Funding from the EC	€ 2.5m	€ 2.44m
Start Date	1 September 2015	1 March 2018
End Date	28 February 2018	31 August 2020