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Account of the Exa-MA Project General Assembly
On January 14 and 15, 2025, the Exa-MA project met for a General Assembly rich in exchanges and perspectives. This event, held at the University of Strasbourg, gathered 83 participants – including members of the Scientific Board, external partners, and young recruits – with 15 joining online, to share progress, strengthen collaboration among the Work Packages (WPs), and plan the next steps of the program.
1. Program
1.1. Tuesday, January 14, 2025
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Welcome and General Presentations: The day began with a welcome coffee followed by an overall presentation of NumPex and Exa-MA, led by Hélène Barucq and Christophe Prud’homme, including a Q&A session.
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Highlighting the New Recruits: Several sessions were dedicated to introducing new recruits from different areas (CMAP, internal teams, etc.), showcasing the dynamism and renewal within the project.
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Transversal Workshops and Exchanges: Plenary workshops and breakout sessions addressed intra-project interactions – notably around Exa-Soft and Exa-DI – as well as topics specific to the transversal groups on AI and accelerators.
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Meeting of the Scientific Board: At the end of the day, the Board convened to discuss strategic orientations and challenges related to the various Work Packages.
The day concluded with a convivial dinner with informal exchanges among participants.
1.2. Wednesday, January 15, 2025
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Workshop on External Interactions: The morning was dedicated to a plenary workshop led by Hélène Barucq and Christophe Prud’homme, focusing on interactions with external partners, thereby reinforcing Exa-MA’s collaborative scope.
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Parallel Sessions and Feedback: Three parallel workshops addressed the following themes:
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WP1 and WP3: Challenges of discretization, solvers, and mesh generation/partitioning, with particular emphasis on multiphysics couplings.
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WP2 and WP5: Focused on optimization and artificial intelligence, with perspectives ahead of the next NumPex call.
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WP4 and WP6: Convergence between inversion, uncertainty quantification, and visualization of data in very high-dimensional spaces, linked to various applications (geosciences, medical imaging, etc.).
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Conclusion and Informal Exchanges: The day ended with a feedback session, followed by informal exchanges that helped consolidate synergies among the WPs and identify new avenues for collaboration.
2. Key Points and Perspectives
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Strengthening Internal Collaboration: The workshops and discussions highlighted the complementarity between the various Exa-MA WPs. Initiatives such as collectively drafting state-of-the-art reviews and coordinating thesis supervision were mentioned to further reinforce the project’s synergy.
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Focus on the Software Ecosystem and Reproducibility: Discussions underscored the importance of a robust software ecosystem, integrating CICD pipelines and modern tools (SPACK, GUIX HPC, containers) to ensure the sustainability of developments at the exascale level.
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Involvement of External Partners: The meeting helped solidify ties with industrial and academic partners through dedicated workshops and the planning of future events, to better disseminate the project’s progress.