by Rolf Hempel
It is the aim of the "ESPRIT Network of Excellence" (HPCnet) to promote, propagate and use high performance computing technology in European industry. For this purpose, HPCnet brings partners from industry into contact with experts from publicly funded research. Since mid-July 1994, HPCnet has been funded by the European Commission. It is planned to create about 30 similar networks on various topics within the EC's fourth framework programme.
15 founder members from eight European countries representing the state of the art in the field of high performance computing (HPC) can be contacted by those interested in the topic. The project is managed by Prof. Tony Hey, University Southampton. GMD's Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing coordinates the HPC activities in Germany. The German partners are GMD's Institute for Computer Systems and Software Technology, Forschungszentrum Jülich, the Universities of Karlsruhe, Paderborn, Stuttgart and Munich and the software houses Pallas and Genias as well as the computer manufacturer Parsytec.
Providing information about the HPC activities of the founder members and the associated partners via a server in the World-Wide Web (WWW) at http://hpcnet.soton.ac.uk/ was a first step. Since WWW access is not so popular in industry for cost and security reasons, a CD-ROM was produced. It provides a "freezed" status of the information available via WWW.
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