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PRACE 6th Implementation Phase Project

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PRACE-6IP (PRACE 6th Implementation Phase Project)

Berichtszeitraum: 2019-05-01 bis 2020-10-31

PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing, was established in April 2010 as a permanent pan-European High Performance Computing service providing world-class systems for world-class science. Through funding agreements, PRACE secured funding from initially four (FR, DE, IT and ES) and since 2016, five European countries (with the addition of CHE) that committed to host leading-edge supercomputers at the highest performance level in Europe. In addition, from March 2017 all PRACE General Partners fund High Level Support Teams at the Hosting Sites in order to support PRACE users. HPC experts from 26 member states - funded in part by the PRACE-IP projects, enable users from academia and industry to ascertain research leadership and remain competitive in the global race. The objectives of PRACE-6IP are to build on and seamlessly continue the achievements of PRACE and start new innovative and collaborative activities proposed by the consortium such as:
-Provision of Tier-0 service based on excellence and innovation
-Support Tier-0 users and communities with novel software solutions
-Collaborate with Centres of Excellence on HPC applications, and other national and EU funded activities
-Support new user needs, new user communities, and new applications
-Support a functional European HPC Ecosystem
-Provide and develop tailored training and skills development programmes
-A sustainable governance and business model
-Support the strategic development of a rich HPC environment
-Coordination with European Technology Platform for HPC, the Centres of Excellence and EuroHPC JU Research and Innovation Advisory Groups
-International HPC cooperation policy
These activities are designed to increase Europe's research and innovation potential especially through: seamless and efficient Tier-0 services and a pan-European HPC ecosystem including national capabilities; promoting take-up by industry and special offers to SMEs; analysing new flexible business models for PRACE 2 and PRACE 3; proposing strategies for deployment of leadership systems; collaborating with the ETP4HPC, the new CoEs and other European and international organisations on future architectures, training, application support and policies.
PRACE-6IP is coordinated and managed by Forschungszentrum Jülich. It has a budget of nearly 29 Mio € including an EC contribution of 24 Mio €. The duration will be 32 months between May 2019 - December 2021.
"After 18 months of the PRACE-6IP project, the project has achieved and completed the following milestones and objectives:
- WP1: Management of the Contract: The management and governance structure of the project worked well. Two Contract Amendments were prepared by PMO.
- WP2: Sustainability and Development of the RI: The support concerning the development of PRACE 2 continued, with a focus on the collaboration between PRACE and EuroHPC. The relations with stakeholders and other communities were further developed and the HPC in Europe further developed.
- WP3: Communication, Dissemination, Outreach and Events: The PRACE website was re-designed. PRACE organised PRACEdays19 and was present at ISC 2019 and SC 2019. Further preparations for ISC 2020, and PRACEdays20 and 2021 have been undertaken. Outreach to industry was ramped up and a Go-to-Market Strategy “PRACE for Industry” was put in place.
- WP4: Training: The 14 PRACE Training Centres (PTCs) continued offering high-quality courses. The PTCs have collectively delivered 119 courses that represent 326 training days (and a total of 10 073 participant-training-days). A total of 3 549 participants attended these courses. The SoHPC 2019 and 2020 programmes took place, with the latter one as an online school.
- WP5: HPC Planning and Commissioning: HPC infrastructure workshops #10 was held. Two market and technology watch reports were produced.
- WP6: Operational Services for the HPC Ecosystem: The common operational services, provided by PRACE, continued to be daily maintained, monitored and managed. Collaboration with other e-Infrastructure and CoEs has been further developed and the collaboration between CERN, SKA, GÉANT, and PRACE was initiated.
- WP7: Application Enabling and Support: The Application Enabling Services have been carried out, supporting a total of 9 preparatory projects. The PRACE DECI programme was successfully relaunched under PRACE-6IP. The SHAPE activity continued with further three calls.
- WP8: Forward-looking Software Solutions: The selection process of two calls for Forward-looking Software Solutions projects was successfully managed with 10 international proposals accepted."
The planned socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of PRACE-6IP cover several aspects:
1. Tier-0 Service Provision: The productivity and competitiveness of both European industry and academia will not only be maintained, but also strengthened.
2. Software implementation support: This work will improve software, the ability for codes to run on different architectures, the ability of new communities to use HPC systems and it will open up the PRACE RI to an increased number of new users and applications.
3. EU collaborations: The provision of enabling services for user communities (such as CoEs) and industry will improve software and will increase the number of academic and industrial users able to use the PRACE RI.
4. New user communities: Reaching out to new user communities and new industry – both SMEs and larger companies – and encouraging them to apply and use PRACE resources will have a positive economic impact.
5. Support to Tier-0 services: PRACE will provide support to EuroHPC access and Tier-0 services as well as build on national HPC capabilities which are necessary to support Tier-0 services and a functional European HPC ecosystem.
6. PRACE training events: They will improve the education and capabilities of Europe’s computational researchers and practitioners. Not only will it raise the number of research communities and industrial organisations which are able to use HPC, but it will also increase the productivity and competitiveness of current users.
7. PRACE governance: Helping PRACE maintain its financial stability towards it becoming a sustainable persistent European HPC infrastructure has a direct positive impact on contributing to the European HPC ecosystem.
8. PRACE European HPC roadmap: PRACE will carry out market studies, as well as study the strategy of non-European regions towards Exascale in close interaction with EuroHPC INFRAG and RIAG.
9. European HPC strategy: PRACE will work together with CoEs and PRACE users to define technical specifications to support the European HPC strategy in the specifications and operational preparation for the EuroHPC JU Petascale and pre-Exascale systems.
10. International cooperation: Through international cooperation with other infrastructure projects, we can identify best practices which can be implemented in Europe. Collaborations with non-European initiatives can help develop better services, better software, and bringing people together.
11. Project management: Ensuring the PRACE-6IP project activities run well, as expected and possibly beyond the scope of the description of work will positively impact on a strategic, economic, scientific, and European HPC ecosystem level, because given PRACE is the European HPC infrastructure, a well-run project will bring about all the benefits and positive impacts described above.
PRACE-6IP Kick-Off Meeting Group Photo
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