Europe Rising, as Spain takes Supercomputing to Church
More reminders today, as if we needed them, that the concerned commentary in the US about the decline of federal research funding, in general, and about the decline in investment in academic Computer Science research, in particular, is taking place in a competitive environment where governments outside the US are moving ahead aggresively. This morning’s Grid Today article from Wolfgang Gentzch, “Grid Computing: How Europe is Leading the Pack,” certainly oozes confidence that Europe is on track and on time in terms of grid computing:
“So, what makes Europe so different from other national and international Grid research projects? While early Grid initiatives in Europe where mostly unrelated point efforts (as are still many Grid projects around the world today), my impression from the European Grid Conference in Amsterdam is that, first and foremost, Europe now has a long-term, coordinated and shared Grid R&D vision, mission, strategy, roadmap and funding, driven by the European Commission’s IST Framework Programmes 5, 6 and 7 (the latter will start in 2006) and hosted by its Directorate Generale (DG) for Information Society.”
This claim seems all the more salient because it expresses a sense, coming from various directions, that the process of European unification is releasing a tremendous amount of economic, cultural, and intellectual energy that used to be locked up inside national borders but now flows easily across them. A unified cyberinfrastructure for Europe is both a powerful enabler and a powerful symbol of this transformation. And it doesn’t look like ambition will be in short supply:
“The Grid, for Europe, is far more than resource sharing. It is a big step forward to build the Cyberinfrastructure for a united research community tackling the grand challenges of our universe. It is a coordinated, single economic engine preparing to compete with Asia and the United States. And it is a commitment, through the advancement of next-generation technology, to improve the quality of life for every citizen in Europe.”
So “Old Europe” is looking mighty spry, indeed. The recent news of Spain’s new supercomputer, MareNostrum, is evidence that European cyberinfrastructure activity is occurring on many fronts. As you can see in the slideshow, they’re putting this baby on a raised floor “… in a chapel on the campus of the Polytechnical University in Barcelona.” Repurposing a chapel from the 1920’s as a 21st century supercomputer machine room certainly produces an interesting juxtaposition of centuries and symbols.
