PRACE turns 5: onwards and upwards!

On 23 April 2015, PRACE – the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe – celebrates its 5th anniversary. In the past five years, PRACE has made an enormous leap from a project-based consortium to a fully-fledged international association of 25 countries with an office in Brussels and multiple projects that it leads or co-operates in.

With over 10 thousand million core hours allocated through 10 Calls for Proposals to close to 400 projects – of which almost 60 led by industry – from around the world, PRACE has established itself as THE pan-European Research Infrastructure for academic and industrial research and science supported by high performance computing (HPC). And to date, almost 5,000 people have taken part in almost 200 training events.

“Among the major PRACE achievements of the last five years are the measurable improvement of scientific outcome in terms of scientific publications and the research projects led by industry we already supported. This clearly shows that the competitiveness of European systems has increased with respect to the rest of the world,” says Sanzio Bassini, Chair of the PRACE Council.

While negotiations with all 25 members are ongoing to evolve from PRACE 1.0 (the first 5 years) to PRACE 2.0 (the next 5 years), PRACE and its partners continue to be active on all levels:

• Proposals to the 11th Call for Proposals for Project Access are currently being evaluated and the 12th Call will open in September 2015.
• 20 cut-off dates for Preparatory Access have been completed and the process continues.
• The second SHAPE Call for Proposals supported 11 projects from European SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises). These companies will receive support from PRACE and its partners to assess how the use of HPC can increase their competitiveness.
• The PRACE Scientific and Industrial Conference will be held again as PRACEdays15 “Enable Science Foster Industry” in Dublin, Ireland from 26 to 28 May 2015.
• PRACE continues to increase its presence at ISC and SC with workshops, Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, and of course the PRACE booth.
• A new PATC (PRACE Advanced Training Centres) curriculum is under development, and Seasonal Schools as well as the International HPC Summer School are planned. The PRACE Summer of HPC will start again in July 2015.
• A fourth Implementation Project is currently under negotiation with the European Commission who has been supporting PRACE in its development since its inception. This project will enable the development of new services and support of PRACE to new scientific and industrial communities.

About PRACE

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international non-profit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure provides a persistent world-class high performance computing service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry in Europe. The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 4 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). The Implementation Phase of PRACE receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement RI-312763 and from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (2014-2020) under grant agreement 653838.