High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ' 08

The discussions and plans on all scienti?c, advisory, and political levels to realize an even larger "e;European Supercomputer"e; in Germany, where the hardware costs alone will be hundreds of millions Euro - much more than in the past - are getting closer to realization. As part of the strategy, the three national supercomputing centres HLRS (Stuttgart), NIC/JSC (Julic * h) and LRZ (Munich) have formed the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) as a new virtual organization enabled by an agreement between the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the state ministries for research of Baden-Wurttem * berg, Bayern, and Nordrhein-Westfalen. Already today, the GCS provides the most powerful high-performance computing - frastructure in Europe. Through GCS, HLRS participates in the European project PRACE (Partnership for Advances Computing in Europe) and - tends its reach to all European member countries. These activities aligns well with the activities of HLRS in the European HPC infrastructure project DEISA (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Appli- tions) and in the European HPC support project HPC-Europa. Beyond that, HLRS and its partners in the GCS have agreed on a common strategy for the installation of the next generation of leading edge HPC hardware over the next ?ve years. The University of Stuttgart and the University of Karlsruhe have furth- more agreed to bundle their competences and resources.