European project promotes cooperation across continents to improve high-performance computing

High Performance Computing (HPC) is the foundation for scientific, industrial and social advances that improve the quality of life for people worldwide. The main objective of the RISC2 project – A network for supporting the coordination of Computing research between Europe and Latin America – is to promote and improve the relationship between the research and industrial communities of Europe and Latin America, focusing on HPC applications and infrastructures’ implementation.

“The project will bring together the main European and Latin American stakeholders in HPC, promoting the interaction between researchers and policy-makers from both regions. By strengthening this specific scientific cooperation towards innovation in Europe and Latin America, we will benefit from the exchange of best practices in HPC”, explained António Luís Sousa, coordinator of INESC TEC’s High-assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab) and teacher at the School of Engineering of the University of Minho.

Also included in the RISC2 is the creation of an observatory on HPC and a roadmap of the respective existing activities in Europe and Latin America. Besides promoting science, technology and innovation, the project will contribute to the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and address numerous social, industrial, and environmental issues, such as energy security, international cybernetics policies or climate change.

The project, led by the Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC) in Spain, includes 16 partners from 12 countries: Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (Spain); Forschungzentrum Jülich GmbH (Germany); Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique and Bull Atos (France); Consorzio Interuniversitario (Italy); University of Coimbra and INESC TEC (Portugal); Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina)M Universidad Industrial de Santander, High Performance and Scientific Computing Center (Colombia); Universidad de la República, National Supercomputing Center (Uruguay); Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica and Instituto Alberto Luiz Coimbra de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa de Engenharia (Brazil); Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Avanzados (Mexico); National Laboratory for High Performance Computing (Chile) and Centro Nacional de Alta Tecnología (Costa Rica).

The INESC TEC team is also represented by Rui Oliveira, member INESC TEC’s Board and director of the Center for Advanced Computing at the University of Minho (MACC), by Ricardo Vilaça, researcher at HASLab and MACC, and by Paula Rodrigues, from INESC TEC.

RISC2 received funding from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under agreement number 101016478.

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and UMinho.