Speaker
Kimmo Koski
(CSC)
Description
Within the last two years a consortium of 20 European
countries has prepared the legal and technical prerequisites
for the establishment of a leadership-class supercomputing
infrastructure in Europe. The consortium named
"Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe" has carried
out a preparatory phase project supported by the European
Commission. The statutes of the new association, a Belgian
"association sans but lucrative", were signed in April 2010
and its inauguration took place in June 2010. So far, four
members have committed to provide compute cycles worth
€ 100 Million each in the 5 years period until 2015. The
hosting countries in succession foresee the installation of
machines of the highest performance class (Tier-0),
providing a diversity of architectures beyond Petaflop/s
performance with increasing capability.
Access to the infrastructure is provided on the basis of
scientific quality through a pan-European peer review
system under the guidance of the scientific steering
committee (SSC) of PRACE. The SSC is a group of leading
European peers from a variety of fields in computational
science and engineering. Proposals can be submitted in form
of projects or as programs by communities. In May 2010 a
first early-access call was issued, and the provision of
computer time through PRACE is foreseen commencing in
August 2010 by the supercomputer JUGENE of Research
Centre Jülich. Regular provision will start in November
2010.
PRACE's Tier-0 supercomputing infrastructure will be
complemented by national centres (Tier-1) of the PRACE
partners. In the tradition of DEISA, the Tier-1 centres will
provide limited access to national systems for European
groups granted through national peer review and
synchronized by PRACE.
Under the umbrella of PRACE, a first implementation project
will start soon and a second and third one are intended to
follow in 2011 and 2013, respectively. The short-term goal
is to Petascale facilities, tools, algorithms and applications,
the long-term goal is to provide a pathway towards Exascale
computing.
