1. PRACE Experiences of an e-Infrastructure Flagship Project
Thomas Eickerman – Jülich Supercomputing Centre

2. PRACE The Partnership for Advance Computing in Europe is the European HPC Research Infrastructure
PRACE enables world-class science through large scale simulations
PRACE provides HPC services on leading edge capability systems on a diverse set of architectures
PRACE operates up to six Tier-0 systems as a single entity including user and application support
International non-for-profit Association with seat in Brussels; 20 members
Systems funded by hosting members with 100 Million € / 5 years each
Currently France, Germany, Italy, Spain; The Netherlands expected soon
PRACE offers its resources through a single pan-European peer review process
Governed by an independent Scientific Steering Committee

3. HET: The Scientific Case
Weather, Climatology, Earth Science
degree of warming, scenarios for our future climate.
understand and predict ocean properties and variations
weather and flood events
Astrophysics, Elementary particle physics, Plasma physics
systems, structures which span a large range of different length and time scales
quantum field theories like QCD, ITER
Material Science, Chemistry, Nanoscience
understanding complex materials, complex chemistry, nanoscience
the determination of electronic and transport properties
Life Science
system biology, chromatin dynamics, large scale protein dynamics, protein association and aggregation, supramolecular systems, medicine
Engineering
complex helicopter simulation, biomedical flows, gas turbines and internal combustion engines, forest fires, green aircraft,
virtual power plant

4. HPC on ESFRI Roadmap 2006
HET “The Scientific Case for a European Super Computing Infrastructure” created by leading computational scientists from 5 key areas of computational science
PRACE as a horizontal RI has no own community that “fights” for it: Proven need and support by several communities was instrumental getting political support
Scientific Steering Committee User communities need a prominent role in the RI governance to maintain their support 4

5. PRACE Implementation Phase (1IP, 2IP)
PRACE Timeline
HPCEUR
HET
PRACE Preparatory
PRACE MoU
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
EU-Grant: INFSO-RI , 10 Mio. €
PRACE Operation
Phase
PRACE Implementation Phase (1IP, 2IP)
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
June 9th, 2010
1st Council
PRACE (AISBL), a legal entity with seat in Brussels

6. Status and Achievements – Impact so far (1/2)
PRACE RI established as an international non-profit association (AISBL) in Brussels on April 23, 2010
20 member states (and associated countries) involved
400 Mio € from France, Germany Italy, Spain for
70+ Mio € from EC for preparatory + implementation phase projects
Challenges and approaches taken
Increase level of commitment of member states along with progress of preparations: MoU  LoC  Mandate for partners to accede to association and sign funding agreements
Stepwise approach to integration:
Starting with coordinated national procurements
A possible future transition to joint procurements would require additional incentives for the national funding agencies (e.g. a significant EC contribution to the TCO) 6

7. Status and Achievements – Impact so far (2.2)
PRACE RI is operational and ramping up rapidly
First Tier-0 system operational: BlueGene / P in – the fastest Supercomputer in Europe
2 calls for project proposals managed (in June and August)
proposals asking for Mio core hours
Mio core hours granted to projects
Principal investigators from 8 (5 / 5) countries
2nd regular call published on Nov. 1st – 6 monthly calls will follow
2nd Tier-0 system announced: 1.6 PFlops Bull Cluster in France, owned by GENCI, operated by CEA
User support mainly funded through FP7 project PRACE-1IP 7

8. Impact Assessment
Main objective is providing high-end HPC services to European Science and Engineering communities
Amount of resources granted, # projects granted, # countries, # companies, # relevant codes enabled, …
Results produced by the grants, e.g. number and impact of publications, …
Participation in PRACE Training events
Foster European HPC industry
STRATOS is an interest group where technology providers exchange ideas and information and breed joint activities
# and volume of joint projects stimulated (e.g. in FP7 Exascale call) ?
External input and advice is welcome
PRACE SSC, ERINA+, e-Infrastructures Observatory 8

9. High-End HPC Resources granted
Year
TFlop/s hours granted
Provider
2005 6
DEISA
2006
2007 15
2008 24
2009 30
2010
201
PRACE 9

10. The growing PRACE family
PRACE-1IP Kick-off meeting in Garching

11. Backup slide: The ESFRI Vision for a European HPC service
European HPC-facilities at the top of
an HPC provisioning pyramid
Tier-0: 3-6 European Centres for Petaflop
Tier-1: National Centres
Tier-2: Regional/University Centres
Creation of a European HPC ecosystem
Scientific and industrial user communities
HPC service providers on all tiers
Grid Infrastructures
The European HPC hard- and software industry
PRACE
Tier-0
DEISA/PRACE
capability
Tier-1
Tier-2
# of systems 11 11