Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SLICES-PP (Scientific Large-scale Infrastructure for Computing/Communication Experimental Studies - Preparatory Phase)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2024-08-31
The digital infrastructures research community continues to face numerous new challenges towards the design of the Next Generation Internet. This is an extremely complex ecosystem encompassing communication, networking, data-management and data-intelligence issues, supported by established and emerging technologies such as IoT, 5/6G, cloud-to-edge computing. Coupled with the enormous amount of data generated and exchanged over the network, this calls for incremental as well as radically new design paradigms. Experimentally-driven research is becoming worldwide a de-facto standard, which has to be supported by large-scale research infrastructures to make results trusted, repeatable and accessible to the research communities. SLICES-RI (Research Infrastructure), which was recently included in the 2021 ESFRI roadmap, aims to answer these problems by building a large infrastructure needed for the experimental research on various aspects of distributed computing, networking, IoT and 5/6G networks. It will provide the resources needed to continuously design, experiment, operate and automate the full lifecycle management of digital infrastructures, data, applications, and services.
The overall objective of SLICES-PP is to tackle all key questions concerning legal, financial and technical issues leading to the establishment of the new SLICES-RI and ensuring commitment of Member States/Associated Countries to its long-term operation and use in all fields of science.
It will also settle the final technical architecture design for implementation. It will position SLICES as an impactful instrument to support European advanced research, industrial competitiveness and societal impact in the digital era.
The overall objective of SLICES-PP is to tackle all key questions concerning legal, financial and technical issues leading to the establishment of the new SLICES-RI and ensuring commitment of Member States/Associated Countries to its long-term operation and use in all fields of science.
It will also settle the final technical architecture design for implementation. It will position SLICES as an impactful instrument to support European advanced research, industrial competitiveness and societal impact in the digital era.
At the end of the second reporting period, several achievements have been reached over different dimensions : legal, financial, member states commitments and technicals. First the consortium has welcomed a 26th partner, the Trinity College of Dublin, bringing the number of states represented to 16.
Regarding the legal dimension, the consortium has started the process to create an ERIC. We have contacted our 16 ministries and 8 officially nominated their representatives to an Interim Supervisory Board in charge of preparing the ERIC creation request to European Union. 8 other countries sent observers. This ISB has officially validated France as the host country.
Regarding the financial dimension, the cost of the ERIC has been established based on a detailed governance. A 5-year budget could have been established for each national node. Discussions are progressing on the fees distribution of the ERIC.
The hiring of a prefigure maker of the ERIC has been launched.
Regarding the technical aspects, the pre-operation infrastructure has been prepared, composed of different services and should be open at the end of October.
Regarding the legal dimension, the consortium has started the process to create an ERIC. We have contacted our 16 ministries and 8 officially nominated their representatives to an Interim Supervisory Board in charge of preparing the ERIC creation request to European Union. 8 other countries sent observers. This ISB has officially validated France as the host country.
Regarding the financial dimension, the cost of the ERIC has been established based on a detailed governance. A 5-year budget could have been established for each national node. Discussions are progressing on the fees distribution of the ERIC.
The hiring of a prefigure maker of the ERIC has been launched.
Regarding the technical aspects, the pre-operation infrastructure has been prepared, composed of different services and should be open at the end of October.
SLICES-PP is in charge of preparing the deployment of SLICES-RI, a large scale open and versatile research infrastructure for all state of the art and beyond research products in all domains of computing and networking.