PRACE – Towards a Permanent Research Infrastructure

The PRACE project

• defined statutes and contracts for a legal entity
• secured funding of 400 million Euros for the first four Tier-0 systems and the legal entity
• evaluated promising architectures for Petaflop/s systems
• analysed, ported, and scaled key scientific applications
• created a benchmark suite for future procurements
• assessed hardware and software components for future multi-Petaflop/s systems

The PRACE Research Infrastructure will be created as an international non-profit association with its seat in Brussels in 2010.

This infrastructure will be managed as a single European legal entity. European scientists and technologists will be provided with world-class leadership supercomputers with capabilities equal or better than those available in the USA and Japan. The service will be hosted by up to six Tier-0 level HPC centers. They build the apex of the European performance pyramid strengthened by regional and national supercomputing centers working in tight collaboration through grid technologies. The infrastructure will be complemented with network and grid access, and the services required to enable applications.

Achievements of the PRACE project

During the preparatory phase PRACE analysed close to 70 scientific applications from 24 systems – a snapshot of current European HPC usage.

PRACE also created a benchmark suite: the following 22 software applications were selected for the final PRACE application benchmark suite:

QCD, particle physics
Quantum_Espresso, computational chemistry
NAMD, computational chemistry
CPMD, computational chemistry
Code_Saturne, computational fluid dynamics
GADGET, astronomy and cosmology
TORB/EUTERPE, plasma physics
WRF, atmospheric modelling
NEMO, ocean modelling
CP2K, computational chemistry
GROMACS, computational chemistry
NS3D, computational fluid dynamics
AVBP, computational fluid dynamics
HELIUM, computational physics
TRIPOLI-4, computational engineering
PEPC, plasma physics
G PAW, computational chemistry
ALYA, computational mechanics
O CTO PUS, computational chemistry
BSIT, computational geophysics
ELMER, computational engineering
SPECFEM3D, computational geophysics

PRACE installed six production system prototypes: the IBM BlueGene/P at FZJ (Germany), a CSC–CSCS joint prototype, Cray XT5, located at CSC (Finland–Switzerland), the IBM Power6 at NCF–SARA (the Netherlands), the IBM Cell at BSC
(Spain), the NEC SX-9 at HLRS (Germany) and a joint BULL prototype of FZJ and GENCI–CEA (Germany–France). These prototypes are available for testing for European users.

PRACE also evaluated components and technologies for future multi-Petaflop/s systems. A set of nine prototypes were installed at the following PRACE partner sites: CINECA (Italy), EPSRC–EPCC (the UK), CSCS (Switzerland), FZJ
(Germany), GENCI–CEA (France), BAdW-LRZ (Germany), NCF–SARA (the Netherlands), KTH (Sweden) and a joint prototype of BAdW-LRZ and GENCI–CINES (Germany–France).

PRACE conducted a survey among Europe’s top HPC users about their training needs and organised a series of PRACE schools and code-porting workshops.

STRATOS, the PRACE advisory group on Strategic Technologies, was created as the initial step in a continuous process to survey promising hardware and software components for use in future multi-Petaflop/s systems and to foster collaborations with industry in order to increase HPC expertise in Europe.

PRACE in 2010

In 2010 PRACE will open a call for proposals for access to PRACE resources on the IBM Blue Gene/P installed in Jülich@GSC (Germany) – the first PRACE Tier-0 system – to be published spring 2010. PRACE will also announce the peer review process for accessing PRACE resources during spring 2010.

PRACE will also setup the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee and intensify the education and training programme for HPC

Currently, PRACE is eligible for EC contributions towards the implementation of the PRACE Research Infrastructure: it is likely that the PRACE Implementation Project will start in mid-2010

20 countries are part of the PRACE project.

More information: www.prace-project.eu