Nowadays, access to high performance computing resources is a key element in national competitiveness, both for the advancement of scientific research at the highest possible level, and to sustain economic growth through innovation. The USA, Japan, and now China are investing massively in their HPC industries. Europe is rapidly waking up to the fact that its scientists and its industry must have access to large-scale computing resources if they are to stay in the race at all. But over and above this, Europe should also give itself the means to build a vast European HPC ecosystem to support innovation, because technological independence is even more strategic than the availability of adequate computing resources.

Technological independence is Europe's best asset when it comes to facing up to global competition and ensuring the creation of high-level employment in Europe. Europe has all the skills required to meet this challenge: witness the fact that Bull and CEA successfully co-designed Tera 100, the first European-developed system to break the petaflops barrier