The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, PRACE, is a unique persistent pan-European Research Infrastructure for High Performance Computing (HPC). PRACE is a project funded in part by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme.
PRACE forms the top level of the European HPC ecosystem. The partnership was established through the close collaboration of the European countries that prepared the legal, financial, and technical basis in a project funded in part by the European Commission. PRACE provides Europe with world-class systems for world-class science and strengthens Europe’s scientific and industrial competitiveness. PRACE will maintain a pan-European HPC service consisting of up to six top of the line leadership systems (Tier-0) well integrated into the European HPC ecosystem. Each system will provide computing power of several Petaflop/s (one quadrillion operations per second) in midterm. On the longer term (2019) Exaflop/s (one quintillion) computing power will be targeted by PRACE. This infrastructure is managed as a single European entity,
The PRACE RI is a pan-European infrastructure seated in Brussels and established as an international non-profit association of European government representative organizations responsible for High-Performance Computing resources and services for public research.
Named ‘Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe AISBL’, it currently has 20 members, representing Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.
These partners are creating a pan-European world class computing and data management infrastructure, providing access to resources at the highest performance level including sophisticated services for scientific simulations in all fields of science and engineering.
The PRACE RI is open to all European researchers and their collaborators for research with potential for high European and international impact. Applications for access are subject to peer review overseen by the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee comprised of leading European researchers.
Further info about the PRACE access programme are available here: http://www.prace-ri.eu/spip.php?rubrique3&lang=en
European Exascale Software Initiative
Project web site: http://www.eesi-project.eu/pages/menu/homepage.php
The objective of this Support Action, co-funded by the European Commission is to build a European vision and roadmap to address the challenges of the new generation of massively parallel systems composed of millions of heterogeneous cores which will provide Petaflop performances in 2010 and Exaflop performances in 2020 (the speed of a supercomputer is measured in "FLOPS" (FLoating Point Operations Per Second)), "Petascale" supercomputers can process one quadrillion (1015) (1000 trillion) FLOPS, Exascale is computing performance is one quintillion (1018) FLOPS (one million teraflops). Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems involving quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals), physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in wind tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons, and research into nuclear fusion). A particular class of problems, known as Grand Challenge problems, are problems whose full solution requires semi-infinite computing resources.
PlanetHPC: setting the R&D roadmap for HPC in Europe
Planet HPC is a unique European network of the major players in HPC, linking the scientific and business sectors with EU policymakers. It offers anyone involved in HPC an opportunity to influence the direction of HPC research in Europe.
PlanetHPC will identify the major technological challenges that face HPC, together with end-user requirements that must be met for HPC to be an effective business tool and realise its full socio-economic impact. Its findings will be presented to the European Commission at the end of 2011, in the form of a roadmap for HPC research.
By joining PlanetHPC, you can be part of this effort. The network is free to join, and members can participate in discussion forums for special interest groups and have exclusive access to reports, articles and interviews with key figures in the European HPC industry. A forthcoming series of workshops will be based directly on feedback from the membership.
To find out more and register, visit www.planethpc.eu.
PlanetHPC is led by EPCC at the University of Edinburgh and is funded by the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) under grant agreement number 248749
PROSPECT
The idea of a consortium for the "Promotion of Supercomputing Partnerships for European Competitiveness and Technology" - in short "PROSPECT" - started with a Memorandum of Understanding signed by 12 European Parties involved in High Performance Computing at October, 24th 2007. The initial members were European Supercomputing Centers - namely the Jülich Research Center, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the Leibniz Supercomputing Center -, a few university chairs, and several companies offering hardware or software for High Performance Computing.
The purpose of the consortium, as stated in the Memorandum of Understanding, has been the following:
• Under the PROSPECT umbrella the Parties intend to create projects concerning the main objective to develop hardware and application and system software components as well as related operating and programming concepts for Peta- and multi-Petaflop systems as a contribution to the PRACE-project.
• PROSPECT will support the parties in the communication with the PRACE-consortium.
• The intended projects and their legal basis have to be defined within the respective members at a later time and are not subject to the PROSPECT regulations but are expected to foster the PROSPECT objectives.
• The details of these joint projects in particular but not limited to the precise topic, work program of each Party, starting date and duration, intellectual property rights ownership and licensing and possible financing will be subject to future agreement(s) by the Parties.
After working together for one year the next milestone was the foundation of "PROSPECT e.V." (e.V. is German for "registered association"). The Prospect association has been founded on December, 15th 2008 in Garching, Germany. The purpose of the association is the furtherance of science and research in the field of supercomputing and technologies associated therewith. The association will realize its purpose in particular by holding scientific presentations and supporting research projects. Its aim is to foster the creation of a European Technology Platform (ETP) for HPC.
The association's organs are the General Meeting - a meeting of all Prospect members at least once a year - the Executive Committee, and the Auditors.
http://www.prospect-hpc.eu/
STRATOS
Fourteen partners have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a permanent research platform called STRATOS. The MoU was signed by 12 PRACE partners, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, and two associated partners.
STRATOS stands for “PRACE advisory group for Strategic Technologies”. STRATOS has the goal to become a unique collaboration of PRACE partners and industry either directly or through consortia which include PRACE members. The objective of STRATOS is to foster the development of HPC (High Performance Computing) technologies in Europe.
The MoU was signed on 16 December, 2008 in Barcelona, Spain. 12 PRACE partners1 and one associated partner, the European industrial-academic association PROSPECT signed the MoU. The association Ter@tec acceded to the STRATOSMoU on 12 March, 2009.
Industrial and other innovative European HPC development projects engaged in development or evaluation of HPCtechnology can become members of STRATOS for the runtime of the projects.
The final cooperation agreement of the STRATOS partnership will be established as soon as the PRACE research infrastructure has become a European legal entity. During an initial period, STRATOS shall be governed by the MoU.
http://www.prace-project.eu/news/prace-to-implement-stratos-2013-a-perma...