TERATEC was founded in 2005 as the result of a joint initiative of the French CEA (The Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) along with several industrial partners to form a European competence centre for numerical simulation and big data. Its mission is to federate all industrial and academic HPC players (whether providers or users) and to offer access to the most powerful systems, to promote and increase attractiveness, and to foster economic development in this field.

Thereby TERATEC gathers leading HPC, Simulation and Big Data players from industry and research with the ambition to contribute to the development and use of technologies in these areas, to accelerate the design and implementation of the most powerful systems, and to foster the emergence of new technologies and associated tools. Thus TERATEC creates expertise and highly qualified jobs in these areas.

The TERATEC mission includes:

Mastering Technology - TERATEC participates actively in initiatives to improve industrial mastery in the numerical simulation and HPC sector, which is crucial to keeping companies competitive and innovative. One such initiative is ETP4HPC, a European platform to accelerate the development of European technologies at every step of the HPC chain, these technologies now being essential to almost all industry sectors.

Industrial Research - TERATEC also helps set up and promote French and European research projects involving industrial companies, technology suppliers, and research centers via R&D programs in France (Competitiveness Clusters, French National Research Agency) and in Europe (H2020, ITEA). Thus the participation of TERATEC in the POP project is well aligned with its mission and is reinforced by two Third Parties: the INRIA and CNRS laboratories that share in the technical program.

Dissemination across Industries and Services - TERATEC helps companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, gain access to the high-performance computing technologies they need to develop new products and services. TERATEC and GENCI jointly run the French national program SiMSEO for the dissemination of numerical simulation among small and medium-sized businesses throughout the country, offering awareness sessions, training activities, sector-specific services and local support. In addition, the TERATEC Forum is the annual leading event for HPC, Big Data and Simulation in Europe, a gathering of international experts who meet to discuss technological and economic issues.

Support for Technological SMEs - TERATEC supports technological SMEs and start-ups in their actions to optimize their expertise, facilitates their access to industry leaders and helps them set up and finance their R&D projects.

Teaching and Training - TERATEC has joined forces with universities and major engineering schools to design initial and continuing education programs that cover the entire spectrum of high performance simulation and modeling. These initiatives will be expanded and reinforced in Europe.

One of the TERATEC successes is realising the first European Technopole dedicated to high-performance computing on the TERATEC Campus. This is the home to an incubator, business centre, technology companies & industrial laboratories, and provides service platforms providing industrial stakeholders with the computing resources, software and technical expertise needed to carry out HPC projects. For more information about TERATEC see their website.