European Exascale Software Initiative: Numerical Libraries, Solvers and Algorithms

Computers with sustained Petascale performance are now available and it is expected that hardware will be developed with a peak capability in the Exascale range by around 2018. However, the complexity, hierarchical nature, and probable heterogeneity of these machines pose great challenges for the development of software to exploit these architectures.

This was recognized some years ago by the IESP (International Exascale Software Project) initiative and the European response to this has been a collaborative project called EESI (European Exascale Software Initiative). This initiative began in 2010 and has submitted its final report to the European Commission with a final conference in Barcelona in October 2011. The main goals of EESI are to build a European vision and roadmap to address the international outstanding challenge of performing scientific computing on the new generation of computers.

The main activity of the EESI is in eight working groups, four on applications and four on supporting technologies. We first briefly review these eight chapters before discussing in more detail the work of Working Group 4.3 on Numerical Libraries, Solvers and Algorithms. Here we will look at the principal areas, the challenges of Exascale and possible ways to address these, and the resources that will be needed.