NATIONAL ADVANCED COMPUTING STRATEGY

Advanced Computing Portugal.2030

 Is a science, innovation and growth strategy to promote Advanced Computing in Portugal in the European context, oriented towards the construction of a high performance computing network infrastructure of world reference. The strategy covers 3 major areas of intervention:

Creating a supercomputing infrastructure in the country at the service of research and innovation;
Developing and retaining very valuable people with solid advanced IT skills;
Implementing an info-structure of public policies to bridge the gap between infrastructures and people, in order to promote the creation of high-value services and software.

Strategy

The strategy considers the development of close international collaborative actions and was planned in order to promote all areas of advanced scientific computing, as well as to mobilize data processing in an effective and diversified way, between industry and academic communities and in all areas of knowledge and economics, health, climate, energy, mobility, as well as the study of social processes.

This strategy aims at clustering several activities in advanced computing:

Capitalizing on investment in advanced computing equipment.
Fostering NACN National Advanced Computing Network .
Participating in RES.ES + IberGRID+ EuroHPC+ PRACE.
Developing large-scale activities that require super-computing resources, analyzing the areas of industry, cities, transport, health, energy, among others.
Specific calls that include the need for compute requirements.
Interconnecting to other computing centers.
Promoting the development of PHD programs.

Ongoing plan

Within the scope of the Action Plan, a set of activities are being carried out, such as:

IDEUCALION INSTALLATION AND COMMISSIONING:

- Chosen location: Ave Park, Guimarães;
- Installation scheduled for 2022 (second semester);
- Training with ARM technology promoted by MACC in 202;
- UM, INESCTEC, MACC green supercomputing project with FCT and CM Guimarães support;
- Acquisition amount: 20M€;
- Maintenance amount: 4M€/year.

TENDER FOR ACCESS TO NATIONAL ADVANCED COMPUTING RESOURCES:

- Tender open in July 2021;
- Applications open to A0 and A1 until April 2022;
- 6 DSAIPA “AI4COVID” 2020 approved projects will be able to access NACN resources from November 2021.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE IBERIAN A.C.

Institute processes for accessing Marenostrum-5;
Pending Status of SPAIN and EUROHPC;
Installation scheduled for 2022/23;
Marenostrum-5 being acquired by EuroHPC (First tender has been cancelled).

NACN GOVERNANCE:

- Protocols for joining NACN;
- Training carried out by the project partners.

MONITORING OF COMPETENCE CENTERS AND VISUALIZATION:

Publishing information on services provided and on contact details for access to competence and visualization centers.

4 NEW COMPETENCE AND VISUALIZATION CENTERS:

- Completion scheduled by the end of December 2021.

The Action Plan for 2022 also includes the following activities:

Advanced Computing Project Competition - €400,000;

Advanced Computing Project Competition - €400,000;
PhD scholarship programs in CA -728,109€/year (25 scholarships of 2,427.03€ x 12 months);
Creation of Competence Centers for HPC with specialized technical resources (Univ. Minho (4); Univ. Porto, Coimbra, IST, RCD(3); Évora (2) – to provide services to companies, interface with IHL. (Project Eurocc );
EuroHPC–€3M (50% OE -50% FE)..

Additional information about the Activity Plan for 2021 is available here.

Responsible Body

The coordination of the National Computing Strategy is the responsibility of the INCoDe.2030, initiative, and its execution is under the responsibility of FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).