Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe
PRACE offers world class computing and data management resources and services through a peer review process.
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) enables high-impact scientific discovery and engineering research and development across all disciplines to enhance European competitiveness for the benefit of society.
PRACE also seeks to strengthen the European users of HPC in industry through various initiatives. PRACE has a strong interest in improving the energy efficiency of computing systems and reducing their environmental impact.
EPCC takes part in or leads a number of PRACE programmes:
- EPCC is one of fourteen PRACE Training Centres providing access to training for researchers across Europe.
- EPCC leads the PRACE activity on Applications Enabling Services, preparing application codes for current and future PRACE systems.
- EPCC manages the DECI (Distributed European Computing Initiative) activity for Tier-1 (national scale) system access.
- EPCC leads the SHAPE (SME HPC Adoption Programme in Europe) activity which provides access to PRACE systems for SMEs.
- EPCC is involved in a research activity to improve scaling for future Exascale systems known as LoSync, Syncronisation reducing programming techniques and runtime support.
Science and applications
PRACE covers the full range of science conducted on HPC Systems for academia, SMEs and industry.
Examples of science and applications run via PRACE include can be found on the PRACE website.
Access
Academic access
Researchers in the UK can apply for Tier-0 and Tier-1 access to PRACE. Details of academic access routes are available on the PRACE website.
Commercial access
SMEs in the UK can apply for access via SHAPE—a project led by EPCC which provides support and access to PRACE facilities. Details can be found on the PRACE website.
Trial access
Preparatory access to PRACE is available to users for users planning to prepare a proposal for Project Access. Details can be found on the PRACE website.
People
Mark Parsons, Director of EPCC, leads the UK activity within PRACE. The PRACE activities led by EPCC are managed by:
- Project Leader: Xu Guo
- PRACE Training Centre at EPCC: David Henty
- Application Enabling Services: Alan Simpson
- DECI: Chris Johnson
- SHAPE: Chris Johnson
- LoSync: Mark Bull