News from PRACE: HPC Access Grants and Implementation Phase Projects

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is of fering supercomputing resources on the highest level (tier-0) to European researchers.

Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), as one of the three members of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS), is dedicating a 35% share of its Blue Gene/P system JUGENE.

Project Access is intended for individual researchers and research groups including multinational research groups and has a one year duration. Calls for proposals for project access are issued twice yearly (May and November).

The 2nd call for proposals, this time for computing time on JUGENE and Curie, the system hosted by CEA, Paris, France, closed January 11, 2011. Ten research projects have been awarded about 360 Million compute core hours on JUGENE. Three of those research projects are from the UK, two are from Germany, and one each from Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Three research projects are from the field of Astrophysics, two each from Fundamental Physics from Medicine and Life Sciences, and one each from Chemistry and Materials, Earth Sciences and Environment, and from Engineering and Energy. More details, also on the projects granted access to Curie, can be found via the PRACE web pages www.prace-ri.eu/PRACE-2nd-Regular-Call

Evaluation for the 3rd call for proposals that closed June 22, 2011 is still under way, as of this writing. Details on the calls can be found on www.prace-ri.eu/Calls-for-Proposals

The EC-funded PRACE implementation phase projects met in Barcelona from September 14 to 16, 2011. PRACE-1IP, focussing on the operation of the tier-0 infrastructure, application support and future HPC technologies, planned the work for its second year. PRACE-2IP which additionally focusses on the coor- dination and integration of national tier-1 HPC systems, building on the work of the DEISA projects, held its kick-off meet- ing. More than 150 participants from the 21 member countries attended the meetings.

• Walter Nadler
Jülich Supercomputing Centre

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