PRACE Inaugurated

In a special ceremony, PRACE, the pan-European Research Infrastructure for High-Performance Computing, was inaugurated on 9 June 2010 in Barcelona. EC Deputy Director General Zoran Stancic and representatives of the Spanish and Italian governments welcomed the participants. They emphasized the importance of HPC for Europe as a key driver for the development of modern science and technology addressing the major challenges of our times such as climate change, energy saving, and the ageing population. In spite of the present economic climate, only continuing investment will ensure Europe’s scientific and industrial competitiveness.

PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, has been established as a non-profit association (AISBL) under Belgian law with its seat in Brussels. Founding members are: Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

The German representative in PRACE is the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS). France, Germany, Italy, and Spain are committed to funding and operating HPC systems for PRACE with a total value of € 400 million for the next five years. Resources on the first PRACE production system – the Blue Gene/P in Jülich – have already been made available through a Europe-wide call for proposals.

At the first council meeting of the PRACE association, Prof. Achim Bachem from Forschungszentrum Jülich was unanimously elected chairman of the PRACE Council for an initial term of two years. The Council admitted three more states – the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Sweden – as members of PRACE. During the next two years, the implementation of the PRACE research infrastructure will be supported in part by the EC-funded First Implementation Phase project (PRACE-1IP), which is expected to start on 1 July 2010. This project will also be coordinated by JSC.

(Contact: Dr. Thomas Eickermann, ext. 6596)

from JSC News No. 186, 24 June 2010