Europe-China cooperation in supercomputing discussed at conference

SOFIA, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Every opportunity should be seized to create favorable conditions for joint work on high-performance computing (HPC) in Europe and China, Stefan Vodenicharov, president of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, said at the third Europe-China conference on HPC, which started on Monday.

"This requires coordination and pooling of efforts of thousands of experts from dozens of scientific fields," Vodenicharov added. The event will look at cooperation in the field of high-performance systems to simplify and accelerate the widespread usage of supercomputers.

Liu Guangming, director of National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, told Xinhua that China had almost 30-year experience in supercomputing. "Especially since the completion of supercomputer Tianhe-1A, the construction and system development of HPC in China has reached the advanced level in the world," he said.

Lu Yutong, professor of school of computer science of National University of Defense Technology, believed there were broad prospects of HPC cooperation between China and Europe in areas of energy, environment and bio-medical research.

The conference is part of an European Union-funded progam. According to the latest list of the world's fastest supercomputers, Titan, a new supercomputer located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named the world's most powerful with China's Tianhe-1A ranked 8th.

China occupies the No. 2 position as a user of HPC, ahead of Japan, Britain, France and Germany.