EuroLat
=======
Background
----------
The European High-Performance Computing landscape is set to change dramatically in the coming years.
The `EuroHPC Joint Undertaking `_ is a new initiative designed to
establish a pan-European approach to supercomputing. The programme, which is worth 1 billion EUR,
will invest heavily in new European computing infrastructure, providing the funds for a staged
procurement of new machines: 5 petascale, 3 pre-exascale (approx 150 PFlops) and 2 exascale machines
to be deployed between 2020 and 2023.
Although the installation of the first machines will start in July 2020, there is as yet no mechanism
in place that regulates access to these facilities. While the distribution of computer time at European
level has until now been managed by PRACE, there are ongoing discussions within EuroHPC to establish
the access modes for the EuroHPC computers including discussion of a new category called "HPC Community Access",
which would grant an additional quota to identifiable scientific communities.
If established, Community Access is not supposed to replace the current access mechanism but is envisaged
as an additional mode. Disciplines represented in Centres of Excellence, as well as mature HPC communities
including Lattice QCD may be candidates for Community Access. This has provided the motivation for the creation
of an organisational structure for our community on the European level. Failure to do so might endanger
Lattice QCD of losing out to other branches of science that are already well organised and/or have
an immediate socio-economic impact.
The community
-------------
After initial consultation with representatives of the main Lattice QCD groups in Europe, an Ad hoc Committee
was formed in October 2019, with the mandate to deliver input for Community Access for Lattice QCD.
The collected input from the various European HPC communities will be used for the preparation of a PRACE white
paper that will be delivered to EuroHPC.
The future strategy and computing requirements for European Lattice QCD were discussed with input from major
European collaborations and representatives from EuroHPC, PRACE and USQCD at a recent :ref:`Town Hall Meeting ` in Dublin.
The meeting universally recognised the urgency of raising the visibility of the Lattice QCD community
in the context of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. It was agreed to create a central body, called "EuroLat",
which would speak on behalf of the European lattice community, act as a central contact point and present
a coherent scientific case to EuroHPC and funding agencies, in order to maximise the benefit of the new
pan-European approach to supercomputing.
The objectives of such a body were identified as:
- Definition of computing requirements for the Lattice QCD community based on a broad scientific programme
- Consultation and participation in decisions on hardware procurement, based on community-defined benchmark codes
- Provision of training opportunities for Lattice QCD researchers
- Managing HPC Community Access, provided it is supported by the Lattice QCD community
- Investigation and dissemination of further funding opportunities to benefit the European Lattice Field Theory community at large.
EuroLat takes inspiration from `USQCD `_ that represents the US lattice community.
Next steps and timeline
-----------------------
To ensure a wide participation in deciding on the way forward, the Ad hoc committee was charged
with the preparation of a meeting at :ref:`Lattice 2020 `. Since the Lattice 2020
conference has subsequently been canceled, please subscribe to the :ref:`Mailing List` to be informed
about the next possible upcoming meeting that will be open to all scientists in this research area
(postdoctoral level and higher) who are affiliated with a European institution. During the meeting various
issues related to the possible creation of the EuroLat association will be discussed including its Executive Committee.
Ad hoc Committee
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:alt: C. Alexandrou
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:target: https://www.cyi.ac.cy/index.php/castorc/about-the-center/castorc-our-people/author/99-constantia-alexandrou.html
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Prof. Constantia Alexandrou
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| **Institutions:** :ref:`The Cyprus Institute`, :ref:`University of Cyprus`
| **Collaboration:** :ref:`ETMC`
| **Publications:** http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/C.Alexandrou.1
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..
Constantia Alexandrou received a BA degree in Physics from the University of Oxford in 1980
and a PhD in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA in 1985.
She held research positions at the Paul Scherer Institute, Switzerland and at Erlangen University,
Germany. Prof. Alexandrou is Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Cyprus,
where she leads the Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) Computational Lab. She is coordinator
of several research programs, has numerous scientific publications and invited talks at international
meetings and has organized several workshops in Cyprus and abroad. She is the representative of Cyprus
at IUPAP and PRACE. For The Cyprus Institute, she served as Vice-Chair of the Interim Governing Board
(IGB) and as Chair of the IGB of the Computational-based Science and Technology Research Center
(CaSToRC). In July 2010, the Board of the Institute bestowed Alexandrou with the title
of 'Institute Professor'.
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Prof. Luigi Del Debbio
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| **Institutions:** :ref:`University of Edinburgh`
| **Collaboration:** :ref:`RBC`, :ref:`UKQCD`
| **Publications:** http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/L.Del.Debbio.1
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.. Prof Del Debbio's research interests are in Quantum Field Theory. His main focus is on nonperturbative aspects of field theories, and their application to particle physics. Using both analytical and numerical methods he has worked on several aspects of Quantum Chromodynamics, low-dimensional fermionic models, and models of electroweak symmetry breaking. His numerical work relies on Monte Carlo methods, currently implemented on the latest platforms for High Performance Computing (IBM BlueGene, and GPU systems).
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:alt: F. Karsch
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Prof. Frithjof Karsch
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| **Institutions:** :ref:`University of Bielefeld`
| **Collaboration:** :ref:`HotQCD`
| **Publications:** http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/F.Karsch.1
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Prof. Sinéad Ryan
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| **Institutions:** :ref:`Trinity College Dublin`
| **Collaboration:** :ref:`FASTSUM`
| **Publications:** http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/S.M.Ryan.1
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:alt: H. Wittig
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:target: https://wwwth.kph.uni-mainz.de/wittig-hartmut/
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Prof. Hartmut Wittig
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| **Institutions:** :ref:`University of Mainz`
| **Collaboration:** :ref:`CLS`
| **Publications:** http://inspirehep.net/author/profile/H.Wittig.1
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