European partnerships

The mission of PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) is to enable high impact scientific discovery and engineering research and development across all disciplines to enhance European competitiveness for the benefit of society. PRACE seeks to realize this mission by offering world class computing and data management resources and services through a peer review process.

PRACE also seeks to strengthen the European users of HPC in industry through various initiatives. PRACE has a strong interest in improving energy efficiency of computing systems and reducing their environmental impact.

PRACE Research Infrastructure (RI)

PRACE is established as an international not-for-profit association (aisbl) with its seat in Brussels. It has 24 member countries (see here) whose representative organisations create a pan-European supercomputing infrastructure, providing access to computing and data management resources and services for large-scale scientific and engineering applications at the highest performance level. To find out more about the PRACE organisation go here.

The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 5 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, CSCS representing Switzerland, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). Four hosting members (France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) secured funding for the initial period from 2010 to 2015. In 2016 a fifth Hosting Member, CSCS (Switzerland) opened its system via the PRACE Peer Review Process to researchers from academia and industry. In pace with the needs of the scientific communities and technical developments, systems deployed by PRACE are continuously updated and upgraded to be at the apex of HPC technology. 

The PRACE project partners receive EC funding under the PRACE Preparatory and Implementation Phase Projects.

ICHEC and Ireland in PRACE

Ireland joined PRACE in 2008 by signing the MoU at the Council meeting in Amsterdam, and is a founding member of PRACE-AISBL (2010). ICHEC subsequently joined the first implementation phase (PRACE-1IP) in 2010 as general partner.

ICHEC's (and Ireland's) influence in PRACE has grown steadily since, resulting in ICHEC leading a number of Pillars, Work packages and Tasks in the PRACE projects

Find out more about the PRACE projects at ICHEC. 

Further information can be found at http://www.prace-ri.eu/

ETP4HPC is the European Technology Platform (ETP) in the area of High-Performance Computing (HPC). It is an industry-led think-tank comprising of European HPC technology stakeholders: technology vendors, research centres and end-users. The main objective of ETP4HPC is to define research priorities and action plans in the area of HPC technology provision (i.e. the provision of supercomputing systems). We issue and maintain a Strategic Research Agenda as a mechanism to help the European Commission define the contents of the HPC Technology Work Programmes. We also act as the “one voice” of the European HPC industry in relations with the European Commission and national authorities. ETP4HPC was formed in October 2011.

ICHEC joined ETP4HPC in 2014.

Further information can be found at http://www.etp4hpc.eu/

Earth System Models (ESMs), such as EC-Earth, are currently the only way of providing society with information on the future climate. EC-Earth generates reliable in-house predictions and projections of global climate change, which are a prerequisite to support the development of national adaptation and mitigation strategies.

EC-Earth is developed as part of a Europe-wide consortium thus promoting international cooperation and access to wide knowledge and data base. It further enables fruitful interactions between academic institutions and the European climate impact community.

EC-Earth made successful contributions to international climate change projections such as CMIP5. Ongoing development by the consortium will ensure that increasingly more reliable projections can be offered to decision and policy makers at regional, national and international levels.

A new version of EC-Earth is under development and the consortium plans to participate in CMIP6.

EC-Earth is a Europe-wide consortium and welcomes additional partners.

The consortium is lead by a Steering Group planning and coordinating the development of the model and the consortium.

ICHEC joined EC-Earth in 2007, as one of its founding members. The inaugural meeting took place in Dublin, with the participation of Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley [WE HAVE A PHOTO FOR THIS].

Further information can be found at http://www.ec-earth.org/