Advancing education and training in High Performance Computing (HPC) and its applicability to HPDA and AI is essential for strengthening the world-class European HPC ecosystem. It is of primary importance to ensure the digital transformation and the sustainability of high-priority economic sectors. Missing educated and skilled professionals in HPC/HPDA/AI could prevent Europe from creating socio-economic value with HPC. The Hpc EuRopean ConsortiUm Leading Education activities (HERCULES) aims to develop a new and innovative European Master programme focusing on high performance solutions to address these issues. The master programme aims at catalysing various aspects of the HPC ecosystem and its applications into different scientific and industrial domains. HERCULES brings together major players in HPC education in Europe and mobilises them to unify existing programs into a common European curriculum. It leverages experience from various European countries and HPC communities to generate European added value beyond the potential of any single university. HERCULES emphasizes on collaboration across Europe with innovative teaching paradigms including co-teaching and the cooperative development of new content relying on the best specialists in HPC education in Europe. Employers, researchers, HPC specialists, supercomputing centres, CoEs and technology providers will constitute a workforce towards this master in HPC pilot programme. This pilot will provide a base for further national and pan-European educational programmes in HPC all over Europe and our lessons learned and the material development will accelerate the uptake of HPC in academia and industry. The creation of a European network of HPC specialists will catalyse transfers and mutual support between students, teachers and industrial experts. A particular focus on mobility of students and teachers will enable students to rapidly gain experience through internships and exposure to European supercomputing centres

The project EXDCI-2 builds upon the success of EXDCI and will continue the coordination of the HPC ecosystem with important enhancements to better address the convergence of big data, cloud and HPC. EXDCI-2 strategic objectives are a) Development and advocacy of a competitive European HPC Exascale Strategy and b) Coordination of the stakeholder community for European HPC at the Exascale. EXDCI-2 mobilizes the European HPC stakeholders through the joint action of PRACE and ETP4HPC. It will promote global community structuring and synchronization in HPC, Big Data, Cloud and embedded computing, for a more competitive related value chain in Europe. It will develop a HPC technology roadmap addressing the convergence with HPDA and the emergence of new HPC uses. It will deliver application and applied mathematics roadmaps that will pave the road towards exascale simulation in academic and industrial domains. It will develop a shared vision for the future of HPC that increases the synergies and prepares for targeted research collaborations. EXDCI-2 will work to increase the impact of the H2020 HPC research projects, by identifying synergies and supporting market acceptance of the results. At the international level, EXDCI-2 will contribute to the international visibility of Europe, develop contacts with the world leading HPC ecosystems and increase European impact on HPC standards. EXDCI-2 will improve the HPC awareness by developing international event such as the European HPC Summit and by targeting specific audience through dedicated media. It will disseminate the achievements of the European HPC ecosystem.

The three most significant HPC bodies in Europe, PRACE, ETP4HPC and EESI, have come together within EXDCI to coordinate the strategy of the European HPC Ecosystem in order to deliver its objectives. In particular, the project will harmonize the road-mapping and performance monitoring activities of the ecosystem to produce tools for coherent strategy-making and its implementation by: • Producing and aligning roadmaps for HPC Technology and HPC Applications • Measuring the implementation of the European HPC strategy • Building and maintaining relations with other international HPC activities and regions • Supporting the generation of young talent as a crucial element of the development of European HPC In this process, EXDCI will complement the Horizon 2020 calls and projects in the achievement of a globally competitive HPC Ecosystem in Europe. This ecosystem is based on three pillars: HPC Technology Provision, HPC Infrastructure and HPC Application Resources. EXDCI will make sure that: • The three pillars are developed in synergy in order to achieve the strategic goals of the entire Ecosystem • Tools exist for strategy review and definition for all the three pillars – the project will operate a process for the creation of relevant roadmaps and the review of project results in the context of the entire environment The project consortium represents the stakeholders and expertise of all three pillars.

The European Cloud Initiative implementation encompasses different elements and will require a solid governance setup. A cornerstone of this governance is a Joint Undertaking, planned to start activities in 2019. HPC-GIG proposes intelligence gathering services from the European HPC stakeholders to this future ‘HPC Governance’ - HPCG. It aims to facilitate a timely start of its operations, transparently and non-intrusively leveraging the HPC community know-how, organised with enough flexibility to align project activities with the programme schedule and needs during its ramp-up phase, and deliver timely and useful input to the HPCG. For this purpose the project will: - establish an effective and responsive communication channel with the HPC Governance; - engage all relevant stakeholders in the HPC and data ecosystem via dynamically managed ad hoc task forces; - develop knowledge registries and consolidate networks of expertise which may already exist; - link national and pan-European activities in the field, involving users, implementers and funders participating in the European HPC and Big Data activities; - organise workshops for stakeholder groups and/or participating in already-existing strategic HPC events; - create visibility and position the project within the European HPC and data ecosystem. The project partners are Europe’s reference players in the main areas of concern: (a) PRACE (Project Coordinator): provider of world-class HPC for scientific and industrial research; (b) ETP4HPC: industry-led think tank of European HPC technology stakeholders; (c) GEANT: the leading European collaboration providing advanced network, infrastructure and services for research and education. The project partners are very active stakeholders interested in reaching the ECI objectives. Moreover, their in-depth knowledge of the field and the scope of their contacts will facilitate the involvement of users, implementers and funders from the European HPC ecosysstem.