National supercomputing in Denmark

National supercomputing was for the first time introduced in Denmark in 2014. Three national supercomputers were jointly funded by the Danish Government, Ministry of Higher Education & Science, the larger universities in Denmark and the Royal Danish Library. National compute facilities were to fill the gap of computing resources between local university resources, Nordic, European and Internationally.

However, more importantly the goal was to give all researchers in Denmark equal access to computing resources in order to meet and qualify within the foreseeable future of Big Data. Three years have passed and the amount of national HPC users is steadily increasing every day. Workflows across university borders have been established, national payment models are in place and eScience expert hubs and centers are forming and adjusting to local needs and resources available.

All in all, eScience is forming its landscape in Denmark. This paper illustrates the journey Denmark has been through in establishing and integrating national supercomputing into its research culture. Previously, such significant compute resources were strong competitive research parameters. They are now national collaborative facilities opening up for newcomers to HPC, increasing interdisciplinary research, transferring of HPC expertise between scientific disciplines etc.

Furthermore, this paper addresses the challenges and successes in reaching this cornerstone for Denmark and in addition identifies the impact of national supercomputing on science in Denmark.