The aim of this conference is to bring together all of the stakeholders involved in solving the software challenges of the exascale — from application developers, through numerical library experts, programming model developers and integrators, to tools designers. EASC2015 is organised by EPCC at the University of Edinburgh.

The scale of today’s leading HPC systems, which operate at the petascale, has put a strain on many simulation codes — both scientific and commercial. Only a small number of applications worldwide have, to date, demonstrated performance at the petaflop/s level. Many of the scientific challenges behind these codes are driving the need for the next generation of exascale HPC systems. Example scientific challenges originate from energy, climate, nanotechnology and medicine and are widely accepted to be of global significance. For simulation codes that are already struggling to scale up to petaflop levels, major investment is required to enable these codes to run at the exascale. Application optimisation and algorithmic modifications only represent part of this challenge. Systems of the scale envisaged present enormous challenges in terms of reliability, programmability, power consumption and usability. Programming models, libraries, languages, compilers and tools all need adaption and improvement. Applications must interact with many of these software aspects to be able to exploit exascale systems efficiently. The aim of this conference is to bring together all of the stakeholders involved in solving the software challenges of the exascale — from application developers, through numerical library experts, programming model developers and integrators, to tools designers.