On the road to Exascale, the acquisition and deployment of the AMD ROME partition of the Joliot-Curie supercomputer, to be made available to researchers in 2021, marked a new stage in France's commitment to digital power, both at French and European level.
The investment for this acquisition was made as part of the European PPI4HPC project (Horizon 2020 agreement no. 754271). This scheme enabled the acquisition of computing and storage solutions by implementing a transnational public procurement of innovative solutions for the first time in the HPC field in Europe. It enabled a joint purchasing project coordinated by GENCI, in collaboration with the main European HPC centers: CEA/GENCI (France), CINECA (Italy), JUELICH (Germany) and BSC (Spain). The European Commission made a significant contribution to the funding of this purchase.
These Grand Challenges ran for three and a half months, during which time the resources were offered to a limited number of users. These users were able to access the full configuration to carry out large-scale simulations, subject to the conditions of use of a supercomputer in its "running-in" phase.
Molecular dynamics, the interface of water droplets, the structuring of tropical clouds, rocket engine combustion, the use of artificial intelligence for aeronautical engine design, the evolution of cosmic structures: these are just a few examples evoking the diversity of the research fields of the 27 projects retained after being selected by the Scientific Committees.
While it has been possible to produce unprecedented simulations, this new facility is also helping to address some of society's most pressing issues, foremost among which is health, and more specifically the fight against the COVID -19 pandemic. As part of the PRACE1 Fast Track COVID-19 call and the GENCI COVID-19 national calls, 18 projects used the Joliot-Curie computing resources.
GENCI and CEA would like to end this introduction by saluting the commitment of the men and women who make up the high-performance computing community, and who are working to put technological excellence at the service of France's and Europe's scientific influence.