HPC Application Software Consortium Summit

March 25-26, 2008
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1205 W. Clark St.
Urbana, Illinois

The goal of this summit is to explore the creation of an HPC Application Software Consortium to support the development of an enabling infrastructure for the application of ISV, open-source, and/or proprietary high-performance computing software in a multiphysics simulation environment.

Such a consortium would lower, for both developers and users, the total cost of development and ownership of the critical HPC multiphysics application software and environments needed to accelerate industrial competitiveness.

Extensive research by the Council on Competitiveness shows that few areas hold more promise for accelerating innovation and productivity and propelling competitiveness than HPC modeling and simulation. As competitive pressures increase, companies must conduct multi-effect and full life-cycle product simulations (including market and regulatory requirements) to meet global demands. But many companies that use HPC can not accomplish this important task. Application software robustness, capability, and ownership costs are major barriers. Yet the application software provider community is relatively small and fragmented and therefore limited in its ability to invest in new breakthrough products and provide full multiphysics simulation environments. Collaboration among developers and users is needed to create an open infrastructure that will enable multi-vendor application software simulation suites to operate concurrently/synergistically.

Based on recommendations from the Council's HPC Advisory Committee, the Council and University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute are leading an effort to explore feasibility and interest in initiating an HPC application software consortium to address this pressing requirement.

From a series of planning workshops a proposed consortium concept has been identified. A concept paper will be provided to all registered attendees prior to the workshop.

This summit is being hosted at no cost to registered participants.

Summit Approach

Highlight findings from the previous planning workshops.
Explore the requirements for a multi-physics infrastructure based on modeling and simulation use cases.
Address technical and industry acceptance issues associated with open interfaces and open infrastructure that will enable multi-physics modeling, simulation, and analysis. The role of reference platforms and pilot projects will be addressed.
Discuss the value proposition of the proposed consortium from an end user and ISV ROI perspective along with the importance of creating a win-win environment for all parties. In other words, lower, for developers and end users, the total cost of development and ownership of simulation application software and environments in a world of parallel computing.
Explore potential consortium models and charters.
Determine the interest of attendees in participating in the creation of the proposed consortium concept (e.g. strawman vote).