PRACE Early Access Projects Granted

Since 1 August 2010, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) has been providing supercomputer resources on the highest level (Tier-0) to European researchers. As Jülich is a member of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) and is involved in shaping PRACE, as well as hosting the only European Tier-0 supercomputer currently available, it is dedicating a 35% share of the IBM Blue Gene/P system JUGENE to PRACE.

Proposals for the first PRACE projects on JUGENE were solicited in an early access call released by PRACE on 10 May 2010 with the deadline 10 June 2010. Emphasis was put on projects that could start immediately with little or no preparation and that would be able to achieve significant scientific results within an initial grant period of four months. The comparative international peer reviewing process was headed by Prof. Richard Kenway, EPCC. After scientific evaluation and prioritization, ten out of the 65 proposals were accepted in this very competitive process: five from Germany, two from the UK, and one each from Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal. These projects, two each from the fields of Astrophysics, Engineering and Energy, and from Fundamental Physics, and one each from the fields of Chemistry and Materials, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and from Mathematics and Computer Science, were awarded a total of about 320 million compute core hours. More details on these projects can be found at the PRACE homepage, http://www.prace-project.eu/hpc-access/page-11/.

From now on, PRACE calls for Tier-0 computing time grants will be issued twice every year, the project starting dates being 1 May and 1 November of the year with the respective submission deadlines about 3 months earlier.

(Contact: Dr. Walter Nadler, ext. 2324)

from JSC News No. 188, September 2010