Top industry leaders and researchers met at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) for a two-day European Memory Systems Forum (29-30 June) dedicated to identifying existing challenges for high-performance memory systems and considering solutions and ways forward. This forum of European expertise represented the first physical meeting of many of the key actors active in the discussion around memory systems. The event offered a space for open exchange and discussion between industry heavyweights like Intel, Micron, Atos, SiPearl and technical experts and senior management from European research centers.

The first day of the forum served as an opportunity for industry players to present their insights and was followed by an academic session on hardware simulation, performance profiling and analysis tools. The second day of the forum continued with an academic session on high-level tools on data placement, consistency and processing in memory with presentations from the BSC, FORTH, Atos, FhG and CEA. The forum concluded with a technical discussion on current roadblocks and calls for a possible next workshop to maintain the momentum started at this forum.

This move to create a community between industry and academia provides impetus for BSC’s work within the framework of a greater EU-funded project, DEEP-SEA. As part of this project, BSC is working to deliver the programming environment for future European exascale systems, adapting all levels of the software stack to support highly heterogeneous compute and memory configurations and to allow for code optimization across existing and future architectures and system. The project has established a Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of international academic and industrial experts, many of whom participated in the event. The SAB ensures that DEEP-SEA partners are informed of technology roadmaps, have access to pre-release technologies, and ensures that DEEP-SEA developments are in line with community trends.

BSC leads a DEEP-SEA work package focused on the node-level programming environment for heterogeneous high-performance computing clusters. BSC also leads the DEEP-SEA innovation council, which monitors, promotes, supports and publicizes the innovations that take place within the framework of the project. With this in mind, it is proactively working to connect members of Europe’s specialized memory systems cluster that directly contributes to this work.

Petar Radojkovic, the BSC Memory systems team leader organizing this event, is convinced that a forum like this “will further strengthen the links between European public research centers and key industrial partners. Sharing knowledge and experiences, followed by candid discussion, is the best way to design and efficiently use future high-performance memory systems.”

About the DEEP-SEA project