“ We teamed up to support several key engineering industries in Europe in dealing with complex applications using HPC technologies. Our goal is to help Europe leverage scientific progress in high-performance computing driven engineering and address current economic and societal challenge. ”
The ubiquity and complexity of data in the era of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and hyperscalers are growing exponentially. From an instant bank transaction to forecasting the weather or simulating an aircraft aerodynamics, myriad of our actions require enormous amounts of data. Making sense of it in real time is possible by using high-performance computing (HPC), which has become a condition for nearly any engineering field, from fluid dynamics, to genomics, and astronomy.
“We teamed up to support several key engineering industries in Europe in dealing with complex applications using HPC technologies. Our goal is to help Europe leverage scientific progress in high-performance computing driven engineering and address current economic and societal challenge”, said Samir Ben Chaabane, Senior Project Manager at TERATEC.
He is involved in EXCELLERAT, a European project that puts HPC at the heart of data management, analytics, visualisation, simulation-driven design and co-design to support innovation in engineering. The researchers are focused on aeronautics, automotive, energy and manufacturing sectors, but the applicability of their work can go way beyond: from medicine to finance or climate change, these applications can help organisations not only solve problems faster, but also discover new ways to respond to the most pressing issues of our society.
These developments can be accessed and used in advanced engineering or further research. In this regard, EXCELLERAT acts as European Centre of Excellence in Engineering by bringing together a broad range of services, tools, and expertise to support industrial users, technology providers, academics, developers, and engineers.
One key application is creating highly realistic and reliable design simulations. These can illustrate a product or process characteristics and behaviour, and help researchers analyse and improve features fast by avoiding unnecessary tests or feedback loops.
On the business side, organisations can make use of HPC advanced modelling and data analytics to optimize processes which translates into important cost reductions. HPC can also improve production cycles, leading to shorter time-to-market and competitive advantages.
Secondly, not all the potential application can have an immediate use. Researchers have to choose those with the most promising results and the highest marketability for exploitation and business development.
“Horizon Results Booster helped us structure our actions. It provided support in analysing three key exploitable results out of the initial fourteen and offered the context for improving them. Both services were useful and provided good recommendations aimed at improving our strategy and bringing our actions to success.” Samir said.
He believes that working with the Horizon Results Booster experts played an important role in having the project teams more invested in exploitation and business planning, the two support services requested by his team.
The applications developed within EXCELLERAT have the potential to accelerate innovation in a variety of fields. HPC is just one step of the journey. “Our focus is exascale computing, which will solve highly complex and costly engineering problems, and create enhanced technological solutions even at the development stage,” Chaabane mentions.
Exascale computing is the next major milestone in the development of supercomputers. It will give scientists a new tool for addressing some of the biggest challenges facing our world, from climate change to understanding cancer to designing new kinds of materials.
The next phase of the project will start in 2023 and focus on developing these applications to reach the exascale level and bring them closer to the market.
“We will continue to work on these applications and make them accessible to the European industrial and academic ecosystem and develop the marketability of the project,” Samir explains. For this stage, the team is considering applying for HRB Go-To-Market services."
High performance computing is able to solve hugely complex and demanding problems, and Europe's scientific capabilities and industrial competitiveness critically depend on it. Projects like EXCELLERAT ensure access to the latest solutions and technologies and prepare the foundation for next generation computing.
The fastest supercomputers in the world today solve problems at the petascale—that is a quadrillion (1015 or 1 followed by 15 zeroes) calculations each second! The next milestone is the exascale—a higher level of performance in computing that will have profound impacts on everyday life.
At a quintillion (1018) calculations each second, exascale supercomputers will more realistically simulate the processes involved in precision medicine, regional climate, additive manufacturing, the conversion of plants to biofuels, the relationship between energy and water use, the unseen physics in materials discovery and design, the fundamental forces of the universe, and much more, according to Exascale Computing Project.
A Research and Markets report estimates that the global HPC market is expected to grow from USD 36.0 Billion in 2022 to USD 49.9 Billion by 2027.
Learn more on www.excellerat.eu
“ Horizon Results Booster services were very helpful. It was useful to understand how exploitation could go beyond direct commercialisation. Through these seminars, I realised that in fact it could be applied to many fields. ”
“ Horizon Results Booster was very helpful for the support of the project exploitation in this particular phase of consolidation. DENiM received good feedback regarding the current development level, in particular for the Key Exploitable Result characterization and the first business model produced by R2M Solution. At the same time the booster service provides us a helpful tool to investigate missing points. ”
“ HRB's support has been valuable in providing strategic guidance and facilitating initial steps in our journey. While their assistance has primarily focused on strategic input, we appreciate their contributions in shaping our early direction ”
