The Open Compute Project (OCP) 2024 EMEA Regional Summit is set to take place in Lisbon, Portugal from April 24th to 25th. This year’s theme is "Scaling Innovation Through Collaboration," which will be showcased through a diverse and compelling lineup of keynote speakers from leading companies sharing information that is timely and important for the EMEA data center industry.
The 2024 EMEA Regional Summit planning started immediately following the amazing and somewhat “bursting at the seams” OCP Global Summit in October 2023. The OCP Foundation has long held the belief that a wide-ranging global event has an important role in open innovation, yet special attention should be given to local community development. Therefore, in 2018 the OCP Foundation team began conversations with the EMEA Community and key business and thought leaders to gather information that would help identify the specific challenges that the EMEA Community faces from technological, regulatory and market factors as well as the goals ahead. This effort led to the volunteer leadership and OCP Foundation team working together on a summit to bring together EMEA technical and business leadership along with the OCP Community to address relevant, important and emerging challenges such as data center sustainability, artificial intelligence (AI) / high performance computing (HPC), data center optimization, DC power and cooling, security and data protection.
With that introduction, let’s look at the exciting slate of keynote topics and speakers that will set the tone and stage for this summit.
Keynotes: Learn from Hyperscale DC Operators and European Leadership
This year’s 2024 OCP EMEA Regional Summit is shaping up to be a pivotal event for the EMEA OCP Community as there are big challenges, new constraints, and paradigms shifting in the data center and computing industry. The keynotes deliver an important viewpoint for a Summit that will feature over 100 breakout sessions, bringing together leading organizations and experts to discuss the latest trends, changes in the regulatory environment and technology challenges affecting EMEA. Topics for the keynotes include the scaling challenges and growing demand for AI/HPC and cloud infrastructure including ARM’s view on Transforming the Data Center - Scaling Computing Infrastructure Sustainably, the evolution of data center facilities, the way forward with sustainable and regulatory compliant solutions, the role of startups and venture capital in driving innovation and talks that are looking beyond, such as by Cadence about Digital Twins as well as hyperscale perspectives such as Intel’s view on AI Productivity and Performance and Meta’s vision of the future of open AI systems.
An expert keynote panel will also delve into the emerging EU sustainability directives and their impact on the global data center industry. Panelists will explore some of the impacts of the directives and how OCP's specification and standardization efforts can help ease compliance burdens while simultaneously meeting sustainability goals and managing the increasing computing demands of AI. Additionally, the event will showcase cutting-edge projects like EUPILOT, which aims to build a pre-exascale HPC system using European and open-source technologies, as well as Microsoft's contributions to shaping the trusted cloud through Confidential Computing.
Hear from Hyperscale DC Operators, European DC Industry and Global Technology leaders:
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George Tchaparian, CEO of OCP, will discuss how the AI buildout is driving demand for more compute power and the innovations necessary for a scalable, sustainable computational infrastructure. He will share the latest updates from the Open Compute Project Foundation and Community.
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Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Chief Innovation Officer from the OCP Foundation will provide an innovation update, highlighting the foundation's efforts to expand its community and shape the future through startup members, alliance partners, and Future Technologies Initiative (FTI) workstreams.
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Gregory Lebourg, Global Environmental Director from OVHcloud will share insights on their path in the data center, discussing innovations in areas such as component lifespan extension, water cooling, immersion cooling, and the use of brownfield sites for data center development.
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Eddie Ramirez, VP of Go To Market, Infrastructure at Arm, will discuss how innovation through open collaboration will define the future of the data center and computing around the world. He will emphasize the need for data centers to undergo a radical transformation to scale sustainably and follows up on the launch of an exciting program announced at The OCP Global Summit in 2023 that aims to increase EMEA supply chain sovereignty.
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Anurag Handa, Vice President, General Manager of Hyperscale and Strategic Customers, from Intel will share insights on new ways to help architects and developers make AI more sustainable and scalable as well as unveiling resources for the open community to build with. He will discuss the relentless pursuit of transformative solutions required to address the demanding needs of the computing industry
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The EMEA Start-Up Panel, moderated by OCP’s Lesya Dymyd, will feature Paul Benoi (Qarnot Computing), Rob Lawson (Molg), Maxime Mallet (Jolt Capital), and Simon Allen (Cato Digital). They will discuss the role of EMEA centric entrepreneurship, startups, and venture capital with the opportunities of the OCP Ecosystem, covering data center innovation, growth opportunities, and industry challenges.
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Daniel Pope, Founder and CTO from Submer and Carlos Puchol from the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre will present the EUPILOT project, which aims to build an end-to-end demonstrator of accelerators for a pre-exascale HPC system using European and open-source technologies and standards, revealing an exciting pathway to extend opportunities to build EMEA Supply chain sovereignty.
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Hassan Moezzi from Cadence will reveal an important challenge to address, the surprisingly costly issue of stranded capacity in data centers and how typically over 30% of DC capacity is wasted, at a time when the industry cannot afford this level of inefficiency. He will explain how digital twin technology for data center lifecycle management can help and make a large positive impact for the industry as AI clusters are deployed.
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The EU Directives Panel, moderated by Mark Acton, will feature Miranda Gardiner (iMasons Climate Accord), Richard Kenney (Interact DC), Loren Long (3TAG), and Gregory Lebourg (OVH). They will delve into the emerging EU sustainability directives covering complexities with carbon measurement and disclosure, and heat reuse mandates, their global ripple effects, and how OCP's specification and standardization efforts can help ease these compliance burdens.
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Bryan Kelly, Principal Firmware Engineering Manager from Microsoft will discuss the company's contributions to the Open Compute Project and its collaboration with the industry and open-source community. He will focus on the next era of Confidential Computing, introducing both alarming challenges and new ideas around Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC). Open innovations The EMEA OCP Community will be able to leverage as a foundation for building solutions and shaping the trusted cloud.
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Ola Torudbakken Director of Infrastructure from Meta will present progress in their transformational journey and unveil to the audience a comprehensive vision for building open AI systems for scale, incorporating standardized chassis and rack architectures, cooling solutions, validation, testing methodologies, and unified fabric.
The lineup is well balanced with subjects focused on sustainability, subsystem improvements around compute and networking, very innovative ideas in data center facilities, updates on open innovation projects, regulatory changes, advances in security and the vision of future AI platforms. As you will notice, this represents a wide array of viewpoints from multiple parts of the ecosystem focused on issues that are important to the EMEA OCP Community. We strive to keep the focus of presentations and keynotes, from hyperscale through local business and thought leaders, on important issues through community-focused conversations instead of organizational messages. This sets the stage for great keynote presentations that you can learn from.
Still time to Meet in Lisbon
It’s not too late to participate in this event. In addition to being a very good venue with interesting surroundings (good coffee I hear), organized around the open session rooms, there is an exhibit floor so you can take in the latest products, an Innovation Village that is a non-commercial space for projects and organizations to demonstrate new and emerging technologies, food/snacks/coffee to keep you going, spaces to meet in plus social events that can lead to opportunities to build your network.
To register for this event, you may do so here:
https://www.opencompute.org/summit/regional-summit
The full schedule is available here: https://2024ocpregional.fnvirtual.app/a/schedule/
EU Energy Efficiency Directive here: https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficiency-targets-directive-and-rules/energy-efficiency-directive_en
We are at the crossroads of major changes to the IT ecosystem due to forces like the explosion of data, the dramatic impacts of implementing AI, technological roadmap evolution of compute and networking, key challenges towards operating sustainably, and EMEA drives for privacy and supply chain sovereignty to name a few. This 2024 OCP EMEA Regional Summit in Lisbon looks to help move the EMEA IT data center industry forward, by bringing together the OCP Community, including hyperscale operators, key European and data center Industry organizations, innovators, and thought leaders, to foster collaboration, bring important issues to the forefront, and leverage the power of open collaboration. Through this summit, the OCP brings hyperscale innovation for open EMEA based communities to drive development, and address the pressing challenges faced by the community today to build and strengthen the local supply chain.
This will be the 5th OCP European Regional Summit and there has been great progress in this journey. The Foundation team and he OCP Community, EMEA business and thought leaders have collaborated and worked hard to make this event relevant, exciting and productive. We can hardly wait for the first keynote to begin.
In the meantime, please hop on the EMEA Community Calls. Start with this link, see the calendar and sign up for the mailing list.
Check out the keynotes! Looking forward to meeting you.