India has called for proposals under the Cooperation on High Performance Computing pact it signed with the European Union in 2022.

The pact was signed at a virtual ceremony in November of that COVID-blighted year. At the time, India and the EU pledged "deepening technological cooperation on Quantum and High Performance Computing" and set goals including promotion of R&D in HPC technologies.

And then … not much happened.

But in February the EU activated its part of the pact, by issuing a call "to develop a collaboration in HPC with India, advancing the optimization and co-development of HPC applications in domains of common interest, promoting the exchange of researchers and engineers between India and the EU."

Europe's hoped-four outcomes from the collaboration are:

• Enhanced HPC applications and codes in academic and industrial cases of interest for Europe and India in the identified priority domains;
• Improved sharing of information and expertise to solve common societal problems with the use of advanced computing;
• Facilitation of exchange of researchers and engineers between India and the EU and their access to advanced India and EuroHPC joint undertaking supercomputing resources;
• Improved international cooperation of EU-India HPC communities on advanced HPC application development, with a roadmap for future collaboration in targeted areas.

The EU's document doesn't spell out how it aims to get there.

India's does. Published this week, a call for proposals from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology calls for researchers to offer proposals on how to use HPC to analyze climate change, bioinformatics, and natural hazards such as wildfires, tsunamis, glacial lake outburst floods, and earthquakes. The Ministry also hopes to receive proposals on "development of an integrated early warning system to address cascade effects in multi-hazard scenario."

"Proposals should focus on optimizing specific applications and software codes, with a comprehensive development plan, including clear timelines, KPIs, and deliverables demonstrating cooperative benefits," India's document states. The Ministry advised would-be applicants to emphasize "technical tasks, with potential for supplementary activities like knowledge exchange. Indian and EU collaborators' contributions should be clearly defined. Proposals should identify target applications, users in Europe and India, and development methodologies."

Proposals that are accepted stand a chance of scoring access to HPC facilities in India and the EU.

India's Supercomputing Mission has commissioned 28 supercomputers - including seven with a petaflop or more of computing power. Europe's High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking has nine machines in operation, and they can sustain 386 petaflops of performance or peak at 539.13 petaflops.

Neither India nor the EU has offered a timeframe for when - or how - approved proposals would be enacted.

The Register is watching. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/04/09/india_eu_hpc_collaboration/