HPCN Tools: A European Perspective

This article describes the findings and analysis following the European Commission-funded survey of High-Performance Computing and Networking (HPCN) software tools. The study’s goal was to ascertain which forces are shaping the European HPCN software-tool market. The survey used detailed interviews with 25 European tool-development centers to define a model for the European software-tool market. Analysis of the market structure indicates that where software tools contain technologies linked to the underlying hardware, the policies of the hardware vendors are dominant forces. The influence of hardware vendors is less apparent where the tools are more closely associated with software applications.