Evaluation Criterion: Impact

Check-List:

Would the proposed innovation study lead to a proof-of-concept demonstrator exhibiting enhanced performance relevant for important applications executed on current and future exascale systems? If successful, would the innovation study results:

  • Clearly demonstrate great potential to solve currently non-tractable computational challenges in the context of use of the European flagship HPC systems.
  • Clearly demonstrate significantly superior performance compared to existing solutions and exploiting the specific capabilities of exascale supercomputers by recovering compute or improving substantially time-to-solution and energy-to-solution for important use cases, possibly across scientific domains.
  • Demonstrate the potential to be integrated into important applications, addressing relevant use cases with a broad user base.

Does the proposed work appropriately address the target for the call, the expectations of the call and the priorities of the call? In particular:

  • Does the proposal seek to realise fundamentally new and innovative algorithms?
  • Are the proposals activities based on existing algorithmic implementations? If the proposed activities encompass porting, reimplemantation, incremental improvement, or parallelization of existing algorithmic implementations the propoaal is outside the scope of the call and cannot be evaluated above
  • Does the proposal commence at TRL 0-1 and seek to achieve TRL 3-4 by the end of the innovation study?
  • Does the proposal provide a list of applications frequently used on HPC systems with typical use cases which could substantially benefit from the proposed solution including an estimate of the reduction of time-to-solution for the use cases?
  • If the proposal addresses algorithms using emerging technologies such as quantum computers is this clearly and strongly linked to HPC, for example, by exploiting hybrid quantum-classical exascale architectures?

Evaluation Criterion: Excellence

Check-List:

Concept & Innovation:

Does the proposal demonstrate scientific excellence, providing a sound theoretical concept substantiated by a clear understanding of the state of the art? Is the theoretical concept consistent with the workplan leading to a proof-of-concept demonstrator at the end of the innovation study?

If successful, would the proposed algorithmic development lead to novel, forward-looking and potentially disruptive approaches to the solution of complex mathematical, numerical or data processing problems on current and future European exascale supercomputer?

Quality of the Consortium

Does the consortium contain the necessary partners with all the skills needed to carry out the proposed work? Are the roles of all partners clearly described and does each partner have a significant and well-justified role? Are key personnel clearly identified and described?

Evaluation Criterion: Implementation

Check-List:

Is the work plan sufficiently clear and coherent so that it gives confidence that the proposed work will be carried out effectively and will be directed towards achieving the objectives of the call?

Is the proposed innovation study, as described in the proposal, feasible in the technical and management sense? Are risks properly described and addressed?

Does the workplan include the delivery of final reports that include material/components suitable for broad communication to a non-technical audience?

Is a successful completion of the proposed innovation study to be expected given the resources (financial and effort of personnel) planned for the proposed workplan? Have resources been allocated to members of the consortium in such a way that each of them has the required resources needed to carry out their part in the work effectively? Is the effort of each partner required for specific tasks clearly described?

Are the proposed resources (effort, budget, any sub-contract) clearly justified in the proposal?

The call expects that an innovation study consortium includes a maximum of 3 organisations and that each organisation is assigned at least 6 person months effort. If that is not true for the proposed consortium, does the proposal provide an appropriate justification of the construction of the consortium in terms of its ability to meet the workplan and call objectives?

The innovation studies will need access to appropriate computing resources for testing and evaluating algorithmic developments and for evaluating the performance impact of their proof-of-concept demonstrators. Does the proposal explain the resources they need and how they will be acquired (which might be through the Benchmark and Development Access calls for the EuroHPC JU systems)?