The project ran from December 2018 until March 2022 and reached its four main objectives, despite the fact that, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, physical meetings only started to be possible again in Q3 2021.
1. The HPC CoE Council (or HPC3 for short) was established in May 2019, gathering all active CoEs. It has met monthly since then, taken 5 additional CoEs on board in October 2020 / January 2021 and consolidated its role as a spokesperson for the HPC CoEs. Interactions with the ecosystem were driven by an active role of the HPC3 office. Options for HPC3 sustainability have been investigated, and the CoE members continue HPC3 operation after the end of FocusCoE.
2. FocusCoE significantly contributed to the industrial outreach of CoEs by facilitating and managing joint cross-CoE participation in industrial sectorial events. The significant adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could be largely mitigated, and the outreach targets were achieved by using a mix of online, hybrid and physical meetings. This was complemented by creating best practice guides on physical and online industrial events, holding workshops specifically on SME outreach, business-related workshops and trainings for the CoEs, and a cross-CoE study on innovation management.
3. FocusCoE carried out concerted training actions for and to the EU HPC CoEs. A training registry was devised to suit the CoEs’ needs and implemented based on the PRACE-6IP project’s “HPC in Europe Portal”, employing the HPC CoE Website as a CoE-centered front end. Six transversal training events and workshops were organised for the CoEs (on pedagogy for HPC trainers, research commercialisation, business development and sustainability, co-design), attracting over 200 attendees. Template HPC training materials were created, based on two HPC applications, giving CoEs important support for developing their own materials. A workshop at the EuroHPC Summit Week 2021 discussed the training perspectives of the EU-13 member states.
4. The project has established and promoted the EU HPC CoE Brand via the Website, social media communication and (mainly online) events. The Website functions as a central information hub with CoE-related news, events, training offers, use cases and success stories has boosted the number of visits. A new CoE technology registry greatly simplifies perusing the CoE’s application codes and software tools.
As a coordination and support action the FocusCoE objectives and corresponding workplan did not target project activities with a primary objective to create exploitable results. Nevertheless, there are project results that have the potential to be exploited (under further development) by future actions in support of the European HPC ecosystem. Components of the hpccoe.eu website can be taken up by planned EuroHPC JU actions in support of both national HPC competence centres (NCCs) and the HPC CoEs. The software that implements the training registry (accessed through the aforementioned website) can also be exploited by future actions promoting training and education from the HPC ecosystem, including, but not limited to, the EuroHPC support actions for NCCs and CoEs.
