Mr Chairman, Professor Moyer, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of all, I'd like to thank you for
inviting us to present this keynote address as part of the world-famous event that ISC
has become over the years.
Professor Barrem, I'd also like to say thank you for agreeing to chair this session, and
how delighted I am to see so many of you here today.
But first of all, I must apologise.
On behalf of Philippe Vanier, the CEO, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bull, who was
originally planned to make this presentation this evening, but unfortunately had a last-minute
business engagement, which was unavoidable.
So that's why he's asked me to take his place on this platform today.
So it's a kind of dual privilege for me.
I'm representing my CEO, and at the same time speaking before such a prestigious gathering.
Now for the native English speakers in the audience today, if you're wondering where
my accent comes from, you've probably more or less guessed it's not some weird regional
accent.
However, it's simply weird because, yes, I'm English, but I have spent that bizarre intonation
comes from having spent more than 20 years in France.
So that's the explanation.
Nobody's perfect, huh?
Now, just to introduce myself very quickly, so I'm Matthew Foxton, Executive Vice President
for Strategy and Marketing with the Bull Group.
I joined Bull Group in 2005.
About the same time as the supercomputer computing activity in Bull was first born in our company,
and straight away I was charged with helping our teams and the people responsible for driving
forward this initiative from a marketing perspective, this initiative which, again, was still just
at its infancy at the time.
In 2009 I helped launch a whole new family of Bull supercomputers, followed by our entire
offering in this area, which we refer to as extreme computing.
You can imagine what a thrilling adventure it was for me to be there at that time, contributing
to the launch of these products worldwide, and all of which has accumulated in me standing
before you now.
So it's an enormous pleasure to be here, and once again thanks to the professors, Ma and
Barrem, for their very warm welcome today.
Now, if we get into the presentation, for the general public, HPC is first and foremost
the hardware, the machines, but for the users, the vast majority of the HPC community, it's
all about the incredible constellations of applications that are available now, extraordinary
tools that can help to do thousands and thousands of different things.
As for me personally, I'm always very impressed by the profusion of applications that users,
such as scientists, engineers come up with, and which are making extreme computing such
a vital tool for all areas of society today.
The success of supercomputers is due in part, of course, to the visionary people that are
behind the scenes organizing the technology.
But it's also down to all of you here in the audience today, the users, the researchers,
the engineers in design offices, and there are more and more of you every day demonstrating
the vitality of the sector and its appeal to all areas of society.
There's absolutely no question for me that in a very short space of time, just a few
short years, HPC has moved beyond its traditional enclaves that were forecasting, defense, seismology,
to become a strategic technology that is helping us speed up innovation, boost competitiveness
in the business world, and protect our national sovereignty.
And it's against this backdrop, this backdrop that I've just described to you, that we need
to see and we need to put into context Bull's commitment to extreme computing.
If we look at the number of applications that are now using HPC, some of them may have
even greater importance than most, at least in the eyes of the general public, and I'll
explain myself, and these are the kinds of applications that help society cope with some
extremely serious threats.
Because even though threats have already always existed, epidemics, wars, earthquakes are
not modern phenomena.
The really big difference compared with what humanity experienced in the past is that the
majority of these threats now have a potentially global and extremely rapid impact.
In fact, you can virtually say that there are no longer any purely local problems.
There are only global problems that demand an ultra-fast response if we are to avoid
too many parts of the world being constantly in danger over the long term.
Now the most recent example, the dreadful earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunami,
is a terrible reminder of this.
A whole section of the Japanese manufacturing economy was immediately affected, which in
turn had a direct and rapid effect on global industries such as the automobile industry
and electronic components.
Even now, no one is sure what the long-term effects are going to be, not just on the
population itself, obviously, but in terms of the nuclear industry, also the financial
sector, tourism, transport, and so on.
Pandemics and viruses can now spread just as fast as an airplane can move around the
world, invading the whole planet in the space of just a couple of hours, and that's where
HPC and computer simulation technologies come in.
Upstream, first of all, helping us to predict some threats in advance and to understand
the potential impact of others so we can be better prepared for them, for example, mapping
the possible effect of earthquakes and stopping people, preventing people from building in
areas where the risks are too great.
Secondly, during the disaster itself, for optimum management of all the measures that
will help minimise the effects.
For example, if there is a massive forest fire, HPC can be used to optimise the positioning
of emergency centres, or the evacuation, of course, of local populations, or during an
epidemic to fully optimise the distribution of vaccines and medication.
Upstream, during the crisis itself, and thirdly, finally, after the disaster is over, as you
know, HPC can be used to analyse all the data, and that's been collected, and to run simulations
so that we're better prepared for the next time it happens.
So extreme computing definitely has a role to play, and it's going to play an increasingly
big role in preventing threats, reducing their impact, and managing crisis in real-time situations.
Moving on to the debate around exascale applications.
Even when there are no immediate crises to tackle, there are huge challenges to overcome,
and it's exascale computing and it's attendant hardware and software infrastructures that
will get us there. It's basically the latest holy grail.
But no one yet has a detailed picture of the whole path we're going to have to take in
order to find it. The European experts at the IESP, the International Exascale Software
Project, who've created, effectively, the roadmap for this quest, have also identified
the key applications that will require processing power at the exascale level.
There are a few examples on the slide. Let's take the first one. Oil and gas applications.
When you realise that an effective computer simulation can save the cost of drilling numerous
underwater boreholes, and that a single borehole costs several million euros, you can see exactly
why oil and gas companies want and need unlimited computing power.
So they can analyse the lower folds of the Earth's crust with greater and greater precision
to spot the slightest flaw and discover the most productive reservoirs. Not only that,
but greater processing power will also help them to make big strides in optimising their
existing oil and gas reserves.
Here's an example. The aeronautical industry, which requires the complete simulation of
whole subsystems and even whole systems themselves. At stake is a huge reduction in development
timescales and massive improvements in quality, energy savings and safety. Simulation of aircraft
wake turbulence is an example and remains a challenge, a real challenge, which is very
important in reducing overall consumption and obviously in total security.
What all these new uses for scientific computing also have in common, I'm not going to teach
you anything at this point that you don't already know, is not just the huge amount
of data and the number of parameters they have to process, but overall the level of
detail required is getting finer and finer. And simulations are getting better and better
at reproducing the phenomena they are designed to model. Those phenomena themselves are getting
increasingly complex, as you know. They typically involve several scientific disciplines, they
need multi-physics, they need multi-scale simulation. And finally, let's look at the
field of high energy physics and in particular research into nuclear fusion, where man is
pursuing another holy grail that of unlimited clean energy. This is one of the main tasks
of ITER to demonstrate that it's possible to produce commercial energy from fusion.
All these fields demand computing power that's measured in exaFLOPS and indeed there's even
talk of processing requirements in the order of zetaFLOPS. So what's Bull's vision of today's
major IT trends? We all know that the race for power is part of a much wider revolution
in IT, which is turning the way we use computing upside down. The world is evolving very rapidly.
On the one hand, computing power is being spread out, decentralized, as it's built into
more and more devices, mobiles and all kinds of devices that connect through the web. Let's
not forget that if we can see today that tablets are being integrated into companies' IT systems,
the movement that started all that dates back to roughly 2004, 2005. So not so very long
ago with the arrival in Europe of the first smart phones. On the other hand, processing
all the data that's being produced, especially by these devices, will require massive computing
power plants equipped with huge capacity. All that power, whether concentrated into
power plants or spread out amongst devices and objects of all kinds, in turn demands
extremely high levels of standardization and openness, ultra-high bandwidth, unlimited
scalability and extraordinary levels of security. And that's where we believe Bull Group comes
into play. What is Bull Group today? Bull Group today is a multi-niche player in the
IT market. It is recognized for two key strengths, two key differentiators. The first one is
its ability to deliver computing power. And the second one is its ability to deliver security.
Those two key differentiators enable us to deliver, optimize, deploy and run data center
solutions, both in terms of critical IT infrastructures and critical IT applications. And that's
where Bull wants to play a major role, to be a leading European player, a provider of
high-power, ultra-secure digital infrastructures. It's at that point where computing power and
security go hand in hand that we can demonstrate a unique range of experience and expertise.
Petascale computing. Against the backdrop of this revolution in the IT world that I talked about,
Bull has committed itself to high-performance computing and we have recorded a number of
successes. I would say that those successes fall into four areas. Firstly, technology. We've
successfully developed VLSIs to interconnect efficiently on-the-shelf processors and we
developed powerful clustered systems. We're also heavily investing to improve and optimize
open-source based software such as Linux and Loose. In 2009, we launched our first family
of Bull X supercomputers, which were immediately voted by HPC Wire, the best products and technologies
for HPC. So from a technology perspective, we got it right. Secondly, from a commercial
perspective, in a very short space of time, just five years, our revenues grew from practically
nothing to 160 million euros last year, of which 35% comes from outside France. Nowadays,
we supply many customers and partners. Most notably, if I take a few examples from here
in Germany, with prestigious universities like RW2H Aachen and Cologne have chosen Bull,
as has a prestigious research center which needs no introduction, especially to you,
Professor Backham. I'm talking, of course, about the Fochstung Center Yulish Research Center.
We also intend to address the Latin American market and we're already supplying universities
and Petrobas, an oil and gas company in Brazil with Bull X supercomputers. Technology,
commercial, it's also a story about our teams as well. In 2011, we have 600 experts and our
ND engineers dedicated to HPC. Six years ago, we were less than 80, so you can see the growth.
And finally, and let's not forget it, it's also a story about a brand. The technology part,
you've got the commercial part, you've got the people part, but you've also got an important
brand part. HPC is a fabulous image booster. For the Bull group, of course, for you and for
whole countries or even regions in the world because there are some amazing stories to tell
about it, stories that have a direct effect on people's lives. And in the space of just three
years, we have succeeded in making Bull X and extreme computing into real badges for recognition
of Bull's technology. And of course, and the examples are on the slide here, we're especially
proud of our ability to design and soon to have delivered three petascale supercomputers.
We designed Terra 100 for the CEADAM in France. We designed Curie supercomputer to be used
by Gen-C and Preis. And we designed the F4E system that will be installed in Japan for
the Fusion program. Not many companies can say that in 2011.
And the first of them, obviously Terra 100, has just been ranked once again as number
one in Europe, having first achieved that distinction in November of last year.
Extreme computing is also about the software. Even before we get into the exit flops era,
the performance of HP system depends in large measure on the software's ability to deliver
all their available power. The infrastructures we provide to our customers are made up of
millions of diverse objects where we have to understand how to install, initialize,
control. You have to know how to isolate faulty components, how to reintroduce them once they're
fixed, and that essentially is the job of the software.
Bull, as you can see on the slide, has opted to use a standard Linux route, which we have
optimized and to which we've added our own developments. We have around 150 engineers,
most of them in Grenoble, in France, a city that's a focal point for high-tech innovation
in France, obviously surrounded by the high peaks of the Alps. So if you ever want to
visit as a customer or a prospect or as a friend, you can always extend your stay to
enjoy the local scenery. And we also have a team of engineers in the USA where we have
a subsidiary. Today, the Bull X supercomputer suite is based on over 80% open source software
and, as a result, it benefits from many contributions from the community. Our engineers have designed
it for round-the-clock operation because so many of our users definitely see computer
simulation as a mission-critical application for their business. And that also is a significant
change. And Bull's long-term goal is to make sure that all of our users have access to
long experience in mainframes. It's being reused here in an intelligent way to create
the world's most powerful systems, extremely open and robust machines, which feature everything
they need to administer them effectively. Obviously, another challenge that everybody
faces when it comes to exascale computing will be electricity consumption.
There are some real uncertainties here about how we're going to maintain the current extraordinary
high levels of consumption when the performance of our computers will be multiplied by a thousand
as we move from peta to exascale. For the petascale generation, we at Bull, we are relying
on several technologies, some of which are already operational and others that will be
soon. We've designed, as you can see on the left-hand side of the slide, we've designed
a water-cooled door that lets you cut your electricity consumption by 50% by comparison
to a traditional air-cooling system. We've also designed, on the right-hand side of the
ultra-capacitor, which is a sort of super-condenser that offsets micro-outages. The advantage
of this is that you don't need a UPS, an Unterruptible Power Supply, which gives you
a further 15% improvement in electricity consumption and better overall system availability.
In the centre of the slide, you'll see an image that represents the next generation
of water-cooled blade systems. We're currently developing them and they will be cooled by
what we call free water. If a traditional data centre has a power-usage effectiveness
of let's say around 1.8, a data centre equipped with cooling doors could see its PUE drop
below 1.5 and a system where the blades themselves are water-cooled could achieve a PUE of less
than 1.1. Just a few words about our offering as a whole.
As you can see, we rapidly, over the last five to six years, we rapidly moved on to
want to cover all the key areas of extreme computing and to equip ourselves with the
best offering in each of these areas. As I've said before, we provide some of the most powerful
supercomputers in the world. We also provide mobile solutions for the new data centres
with our mobile container and, in the middle, Extreme Factory, a pay-as-you-go service delivering
computing power on demand, which also involves a growing number of ISVs, some of which some
of you probably already heard of, including CD-ADAPCO, ESI and SCILAB. Here, too, we are
a leader in the HPC cloud market and our intention here, and I'm not going to deny it, our intention
here is to go to an even higher level. Cloud computing and containers we are developing
will deeply facilitate the access to HPE resources and the result is users, new users, will benefit
from HPC technologies. Let me just give you two examples. The first example, large organisations
who already have their own computing resources but are looking for additional processing
power to deal with peaks in workload. Second example, SMEs, small and medium enterprises
and design offices who have basic computing resources but cannot invest, don't have the
financial power to invest in these resources further and would rather seize the opportunity
to outsource hardware and technical support so they can concentrate their own resources
on their core business. This is, I would say, at least a new evolution, if not more.
However, the challenge is not just about creating the large-scale computing plants of the future
that I talked about before, but also about sovereignty and interoperability. Just where
within the digital space are my data and my processes being held? Are they really secure?
Can I get them back any time I like? Who actually has access to them? This, I believe, will
be one of the biggest talking points as we move forward and, let's face it, there's
no easy answer. But as long, if you compare the cloud to the airline industry and the
air space, it is our belief that as long as the cloud air space remains American, or perhaps
tomorrow, it may be Asian, it will remain an issue for enterprises and public sector
agencies. And that question, that issue, is not going to go away.
We believe that security is set to become the issue of the 21st century. The list of
stories that you've seen in the press over the last few years that get more and more
frequent, the stories that you've seen in the press over the last few months, over the
last few weeks, illustrate my point. Companies like Facebook, companies like Sony, companies
like Lockheed Martin in the US, et cetera, et cetera. All these events only serve to
remind us that digital development has to be accompanied by security, identity, privacy,
cyber security. In a world marked by numerous geostrategic tensions, digital risks are
taking on a whole new dimension. Loss of trust is a major risk for the digital future.
If 2009 was the year of open innovation and social networking, and perhaps 2011 will be
the year of the cloud, then mark my words, it's probably sure that 2012 will be the year
of security. What you don't see here is the people, as I mentioned before. Extreme computing
is about some wonderful machines, yes, but it's also about the human beings. I'll come
back to that a little bit later in my presentation, but this is something that is fundamentally
important for Europe. We need good graduates to become the expert engineers for the future.
First and foremost, that's what extreme computing is all about, and at Bull we currently have
around 600 HPC experts, most of them based in Europe. That's the biggest such team and
the whole of our continent. To round off my presentation, I want to talk to you, I would
like to share with you three challenges that we see in Bull moving forward, and we see
it's fundamentally important for the future. The first challenge is to foster cooperation
between different players, to develop systems like the ones we create. Nowadays, no single
organisation can really claim to meet all these needs on its own. It might have been
true a few years ago, but it isn't true now, and in the near future, to reach the heights
of exascale, we're going to need worldwide collaborations.
If I take Bull's example, today the network of people and partners that we work with is
spread around virtually the entire world. Of course, we're focusing our developments within
the framework of Europe's cooperative programmes. Clearly, for a manufacturer like us, there
are projects both in France and at a European level that are very beneficial. A good illustration
of this strategy is the new project we will announce in Europe in the coming days. We'll
keep you informed about it, so watch this space. As I said before, our current supercomputers
are ranked number one and number two in terms of efficiency, bandwidth, all the ability
to run applications for production. Obviously, it's not a secret to say that we intend to
keep our technology at the highest level and to continue at the forefront of the race.
Leveraging on our key expertise in terms of architecture, our key expertise in terms of
ASIC development, and our key expertise in terms of packaging and software. Among the
major players with whom we have worked jointly to develop our offering, there is one key
organisation, that is the CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.
We have a true partnership with them, and we are continuing to work with them on the
development of exascale technologies. We also work a lot with Intel, with whom we have established
a very solid relationship. We will reinforce partnerships at the European level while participating
or leading numerous programmes, such as, for example, the hybrid 4HPC programme, the H4H,
to develop hybrid heterogeneous architectures. This is really for bull in terms of the first
challenge, the key to succeed in Europe, create a true ecosystem between bull and European
research centres and enterprises.
When you look at the global market for HPC, there's a certain vitality that has survived
even the economic crisis, without too much damage. There are not many other markets out
there that are set to grow at around 6 per cent for the period 2011 to 2014, and perhaps
depending on the figures you look at, 4 per cent for the years following that.
That's what's predicted for the supercomputer market, which is our favoured target area.
Indeed it's true for computers as a whole, in other words, not just the supercomputers
but also the divisional, departmental and work group servers, and we also operate in
all these segments except the last one that I mentioned. As a whole, hardware accounts
for roughly 50 per cent of the HPC market, but, and it's a big but, Europe is not a major
player in this market, by which I mean, of course, Europe as a supplier.
Why? For a market which is ultra-strategic, which is growing, which is a training ground
for our engineers, which is a major creator of employment and of intellectual capital,
why is Europe not just a world-class buyer, but also a world-class provider?
Don't get me wrong, the question is not the creation of a European buy-act, the equivalent
of which can exist in other parts of the world. That's not my point.
My point is that Europe needs to invest in HPC. It's vital that it continues to invest
in using HPC, but it's also vital it invests in developing HPC technologies. This will
enable us to make more appropriate use of HPC because it will allow us to move in the
right direction.
We can listen to analysts and industry commentators when they tell us that we need to buy the
fourth or fifth Exegale system in the world and not just build the first one. Who should
we buy them from? Do we buy them from the Americans, the Chinese, the Japanese, even
perhaps from the Indians in the near future? In other words, from any of the world's major
regions, except Europe, except Europe, which would be the only region in the world that
is not capable of producing these systems, do we really believe that aiming for this
kind of goal would encourage European industry?
So the second challenge is to actively play our part in the supercomputing market and
not just leave it to other regions in the world.
Amongst all the data, all the figures and the analysis around this subject, what struck
me the most when I was looking at it was a recent study that showed how the Europeans
themselves ranked the world's HPC programmes. In other words, the way that the Europeans
themselves judge their own programmes, vis-a-vis those of the Americans and the Japanese, is
quite extraordinary. I think the message here is very clear. What it says is that Europe
needs to invest more in its own programmes, but that also probably means that we need
to revisit some of these programmes in the light of the approaches put forward by the
USA and Japan and China. All these countries are extremely supportive, heavily incentivising
their own industries. Can we say the same for Europe? Apart from the CEADAM programme,
I fear not. To be a major player, to be a real player, to lead from the front, we need
self-confidence and we need to believe in our own programmes and today we just don't
have that confidence. Given that context, our position is very clear. I've said it before.
We believe that the Europeans must invest in extreme computing, which is in itself a
growth market. We have to produce our own European added value in the technologies that
everyone has clearly identified as being strategic. So the third challenge, and I'll end there,
is to create this broad European ecosystem. The European ecosystem is very important.
It's to create this broad European ecosystem. By constantly strengthening the position of
our users, who are the real driving force behind our industry and who provide the applications
that will themselves drive programmes, PRACE, with GenC in France, is going to play a major
role as a facilitator in providing Europe with a powerful network of computing resources
built around major research centres. But that also means that we have to strengthen
Europe when it comes to technology manufacturers and suppliers. There's no reason why the development
of the HPC market should be going on right under the noses of the Europeans. But that
does mean that we need to develop programmes that incentivise European industry, just as
they are doing elsewhere. Which is why Bool is advocating the establishment of an ETP,
a European technology platform, led by European technology suppliers with the aim of bridging
the commercial divide and boosting value add locally. There's a sound economic reason for
this. It opens up the possibility of creating added value in Europe and that will benefit
the whole of European society. So to conclude my presentation this evening,
I'd just like to share with you the fact that we believe that we're in the middle of a true
technological revolution with the advent of cloud computing technologies. That revolution,
it concerns all of us. Firstly, because HPC users are asking suppliers for access to the
shared resources in cloud mode, which is exactly what we're doing with Extreme Factory and
the Numenov programme in France, of which the objective is to boost economic activity,
to enable the development of new usages and to offer new services to SMEs. But also because
the technologies used for HPC, especially for supercomputers, are likely to have a lot
in common with the future computing power plants that will play host to the cloud.
If Ball has developed innovative technologies in the HPC market, it would be good for Europe
if there were several top-notch players who could work together, players from the IT industry,
customers and partners, research centres. Ball is going in that direction anyway. And
we're going there in a collaborative way. We have the experience of a successful European
projects in the area of HPC and we have a trusted partner in the CEA. Our engineers
have started to develop a vision of how to work on exascale technologies. But exascale
computing, as you know, is going to need some pretty hefty, some pretty big investments that
a single supplier cannot take on alone, which is why it is so imperative that Europe establishes
R&D programmes in this area, focusing on the D as well and not just on the R. And exascale
technologies are going to be extremely complex to develop. One thing we're all sure about
is that this will require very close cooperation between suppliers and users. Either Europeans
can choose to work with experts from another continent. Today, it's the one in the West.
In five years' time, it's more likely to be one in the East. Or they can actively decide
to work with European businesses in the same time zone. And the R&D will have been carried
out in Europe as well. Just to give you an example of something that came up this year
this week. There was a major aircraft manufacturer who said something on Monday. Their CEO. He
said clearly in an interview, because it's the Le Bourget exhibition at the moment in
France, he said clearly, it's vital to protect our technologies. Which CEO do you think it
was? Do you think it was the CEO of Airbus? Do you think it was the CEO of VADS? No, it
was the CEO of Boeing, Jim McNunney. And he said it as a warning to his company and as
a warning to his country. From a personal perspective, over and above my role in Bourne,
I'd just like to share something personal with you. I was born in England. I have British
nationality. I've lived in France for over 20 years and I'm a committed European. What
the CEO of Boeing says is, from my perspective, exactly right. Not just for him and his country,
but for HPC in Europe as well. And I'd just like to finish with you. Just to pull out
three concluding points. Moving forward together in the direction of ExaFLOPS. On the manufacturing
front, to build tomorrow's digital infrastructures. On the R&D front, to develop the next generation
of some supercomputers. And last but not least, on the education and training front. And it's
on this last and perhaps most important point that I'd like to end my speech. We need lots
of students to graduate and become the engineers who will make extreme computing happen. Conversely,
if we don't get directly involved in HPC, we risk a real brain drain of the best of
these graduates and engineers who could all but disappear from the European soil. And
in our view, that's just about the biggest challenge that Europe has to face right now.
Thank you very much.