INESC TEC joins new collaboration project to bring Europe and Japan closer together in supercomputing

Medicine, climate, quantum physics or materials science. These are just few of the areas where supercomputing and modelling can play a major role in scientific, industrial, and social development. To strategically improve cooperation between Europe and Japan in this area of research, the HANAMI - HPC Alliance for Applications and Supercomputing Innovation: the Europe-Japan Collaboration project was born.

Through HANAMI, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking – a public-private partnership in HPC (High Performance Computing) that brings together resources in the EU through its Member States, but also from the states participating in the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe funding programmes - aims to promote advances in supercomputing, facilitating the exchange of resources between Europe and Japan.

In this sense, the project will encourage the transfer, testing and evaluation of scientific applications in different computational architectures. European scientists will be able to access the famous Fugaku supercomputer, a machine capable of performing more than one billion operations per second - currently number four in the Top500 of world supercomputers. Japanese researchers will have the opportunity to explore European computing architectures.

"According to Rui Oliveira, researcher at INESC TEC and professor at University of Minho, the HANAMI project is "an excellent opportunity for INESC TEC, together with renowned partners, to establish a valuable partnership with Japanese institutions in the area of supercomputing". Rui Oliveira also mentioned the "plethora of connections" between INESC TEC and several Asian countries, namely within the scope of the CENTRA network.

Hence, HANAMI could enhance the relationship between Europe and Japan, particularly concerning climate modelling, biomedical sciences, or material sciences. "This group is just one example of the various applications that supercomputing can have in the daily lives of ordinary citizens; HANAMI confirms the position of European decision-makers, who believe this field is an essential way to affirm the region in the technological and digital context”.

Led by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), HAMAMI welcomes 14 partners from eight European countries: Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Poland. The Riken (Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), the University of Tokyo and RCAST (Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology) are the representatives of Japan.

The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC and UMinho.

This article was first published by INESCT TEC on 17 May 2024.