PRACE: access to the fastest systems in Europe
Close collaboration among European countries in the field of High Performance Computing (HPC) has led to the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE). PRACE gives top researchers access to the fastest systems in Europe, enabling the Netherlands to continue to compete with countries such as China and the US.
More competitive due to high-quality research
Politicians and policy-makers are convinced of the importance of world-class research in Europe. This research is improved by high-quality HPC facilities, which in turn strengthens Europe's competitive position. It is for this reason that PRACE is partly financed by the EU via the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme.
Collaboration between 25 countries
The number of institutions participating in PRACE is growing. During the initial phase, 14 participated and currently, this figure has increased to 25. PRACE is an extension of the DEISA collaboration project (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications). DEISA began in 2004 with SURFsara as one of the principal partners and targeted collaboration among the national (Tier-1) systems. PRACE has increased this scope to include Tier-0 systems.
SURF co-manager of work package
SURF represents the Netherlands within the PRACE project. National supercomputer Snellius is one of the Tier-1 systems and is therefore part of the PRACE research infrastructure. More specifically, SURF is co-manager of the Applications Enabling and Support work package, making it one of the parties exploring and evaluating new supercomputing technologies.
How do I get access?
PRACE systems are available to scientists and researchers from academia and industry from around the world through 2 forms of access:
- Preparatory Access is intended for short-term access to resources, for code-enabling and porting, required to prepare proposals for Project Access and to demonstrate the scalability of codes.
Applications for Preparatory Access are accepted at any time, with a cut-off date every 3 months. - Project Access is intended for individual researchers and research groups including multi-national research groups and can be used for 1-year production runs, as well as for 2-year or 3-year (Multi-Year Access) production runs.
Call for Proposals
PRACE issues a Call for Proposals every 6 months; applications for preparatory access may be submitted at any time.
More information
More information is available at:
Image: supercomputer Hazel Hen in Germany. Photo Julian Herzog - CC BY 4.0