Mandate by State Secretary Charles Kleiber to the ETH Board:
Mandate by State Secretary Charles Kleiber to the ETH Board Investigate the role of high performance computing and networking (HPCN) in Switzerland
Assessment of the Swiss needs
Develop a HPCN Swiss National Strategic Plan for the period 2008-11
Contributions of top national and international experts
Input of a large number of Swiss stakeholders from academia, industry and other institutions.
Current Status:
Current Status Task force has been formed mid last year
Several meetings, collection of expert opinions were had
The ‘political’ recommendation has been given to the State Secretary last at the end of April
The ‘technical’ recommendation will be developed until September
Arguments for Petascale Computing in Switzerland:
Arguments for Petascale Computing in Switzerland Experts from the Swiss academic community argue for a petascale system in the period 2008-2011
Practical applications seen in
medicine
bioinformatics
material sciences
electricity network management
financial modeling and risk management
modeling of natural disasters
etc.
Recommendation Summary:
Recommendation Summary Switzerland must acquire a new top-level computing system to be located at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in the canton of Ticino that will thus continue its national leading role in HPCN.
Within a strategy of national coordination, this role should be facilitated by the creation of a national network led by CSCS, with the support of SWITCH.
There must be a qualitative and quantitative increase in the HPCN-related education activities with a strong role of the network.
Overall, the strategy requires for 2008-11 an additional investment from the federation for hardware and buildings, software and educa-tion.
Switzerland must exploit its national strategy to play a major role in European HPCN initiatives.