Panel Discussion with Q&A

This panel discussion with audience Q&A, moderated by Gerhard Wellein, director of the Erlangen National HPC Center and NHR Alliance board member, brought together representatives of EuroHPC, national centers, and AI factories to discuss coordinating Europe's rapidly expanding HPC and AI infrastructure. Panelists described EuroHPC's coordination model, noting that AI factories (13 partners, 19 AI centers, and multiple antennas) are already self-coordinating by choosing distinct domains, with formal coordination actions to follow. Speakers highlighted international collaborations with India, Japan, and Latin America (via BSC and DG programs), and stressed that EuroHPC and national centers complement rather than compete, with smaller petascale machines enabling new entrants and diverse science while leadership systems serve established scaling communities. A Swedish AI factory representative noted onboarding times cut to under 24 hours and 10-15 new customers weekly, driving a push toward automated services. France's GenCI experience was cited as a model for federating fragmented centers, motivating a European federation platform and hyperconnectivity initiatives. Responding to audience questions, panelists addressed unifying overlapping national consortia (such as Gauss and NHR in Germany), engaging high-school students through European Digital Innovation Hubs, hackathons, and living labs, and the EuroHPC master's program in HPC. The recurring theme was that skills, user support, and helping startups scale from laptop to supercomputer are Europe's key assets and greatest challenge.