Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe

Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe
Name	Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe
Abbreviation	PRACE
Formation	2010
Type	Research Infrastructure
Headquarters	Brussels, Belgium
Region served	Europe
Languages	English
Leader title	Board Chair

Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe is a European research infrastructure that coordinates high-performance computing resources across Brussels, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and other member states to support computational science, engineering and data-driven scholarship. It operates at the intersection of national research agencies such as Agence nationale de la recherche, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and pan-European organisations including European Commission, European Research Council, European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures and CERN. PRACE enables access to leadership-class supercomputers hosted at centres like Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire, France's TGCC],] Germany's Jülich Supercomputing Centre, and Italy's CINECA while interacting with projects funded by Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and ERC Starting Grants.

Overview

PRACE provides transnational compute resources, training and expert support to researchers working on projects in areas aligned with institutions such as Max Planck Society, CNRS, INRIA, Fraunhofer Society, Helmholtz Association, Spanish National Research Council, University of Cambridge, and ETH Zurich. It allocates CPU, GPU and storage budgets via peer-reviewed calls influenced by agendas from European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Southern Observatory, European Space Agency, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and national laboratories like Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory through collaborative benchmarking and co-design efforts. The organisation fosters ties with initiatives such as EXCELERATE, EUDAT, FEniCS Project, OpenMP, MPI, and Gauss Centre for Supercomputing to support workflows for computational chemistry, climate modelling, astrophysics, materials science, and bioinformatics.

History and development

PRACE originated as part of strategic planning by actors including GÉANT, European Grid Infrastructure, High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, and research funders from Sweden, Netherlands, Poland and Belgium. Early milestones involved collaborations with the PRACE Preparatory Committee, the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee, and projects funded under Seventh Framework Programme to deploy initial Tier-0 systems hosted by centres like CSCS, BSC, SURFsara, and IT4Innovations. Subsequent development cycles linked PRACE to consortia such as Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe-II, FET Flagships, DEISA and national supercomputing procurements influenced by vendors including IBM, Intel Corporation, NVIDIA, Atos, Cray Inc., HPE, ARM Holdings and AMD. PRACE contributed to European roadmaps articulated by ESFRI and to training curricula shared with universities like Universität Heidelberg, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Politecnico di Milano, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and TU Delft.

Governance and funding

Governance structures include a Board of Directors with representatives from ministries and funding agencies such as Research Councils UK, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, Spanish Research Agency and members from national research organisations like VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and SINTEF. The funding model combines contributions from national governments, allocations via European Commission framework programmes, and co-funding from regional authorities such as Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Bavarian State Ministry of Science. Advisory bodies such as the Scientific Steering Committee, the Industrial Advisory Committee and the Technical Advisory Committee coordinate with standards organisations including ISO, POSIX, OpenStack Foundation and software initiatives like GitHub repositories managed by collaborators at University of Edinburgh and Universität Zürich.

Infrastructure and services

PRACE coordinates a distributed infrastructure comprising leadership-class systems at centres including CINECA, Jülich Research Centre, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Surfsara, IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center, and Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Services encompass project-oriented allocations, technical support, application porting, performance engineering, and training delivered in partnership with PRACE Advanced Training Centres, Software Carpentry, ELIXIR, EOSC, Copernicus Programme, European Climate Prediction System and domain hubs like Quantum ESPRESSO, GROMACS, LAMMPS, OpenFOAM and NAMD. PRACE offers procurement coordination, user support portals, and access to visualization facilities linked to institutions such as European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine.

Research programmes and initiatives

PRACE supports research programmes in computational materials science, computational fluid dynamics, climate science, astrophysics, and computational biology with projects tied to centres like Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Institute of Cancer Research, and Wellcome Sanger Institute. Initiatives include co-design projects with hardware vendors and universities such as École Polytechnique, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Politecnico di Torino, University of Warsaw and collaborative software efforts like PETSc, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch and Dask. PRACE also engages in capacity-building through partnerships with African Union, GÉANT, Neuroinformatics Platform and regional centres of excellence like PRACE Training Centres and industry collaborations with Siemens, BASF, Boeing, Shell, Bayer and TotalEnergies.

Membership and partnerships

Membership comprises national governments, research councils and supercomputing centres from countries including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland. Partnerships extend to international organisations such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, World Meteorological Organization, International Science Council and bilateral links with United States Department of Energy labs and Japanese agencies like RIKEN and Japan Science and Technology Agency. Collaborative networks include Gauss Centre for Supercomputing, Partnership for European Research in Economics, European Open Science Cloud, EUDAT CDI, EOSC Association and technology consortia such as OpenPOWER Foundation.

Impact and controversies

PRACE has enabled high-impact science tied to publications with authors at Nature Publishing Group, Science (journal), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Physical Review Letters, Journal of Computational Physics, and data contributions to projects like Human Genome Project-related analyses, IPCC assessments, and large-scale climate ensembles used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Controversies include debates over allocation fairness raised by national agencies like Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, procurement disputes involving vendors such as Cray Inc. and Atos, concerns about energy consumption highlighted by International Energy Agency reports and community discussions at venues like ISC High Performance, Supercomputing Conference, Euromicro, and SCinet. Discussions on open access, software licensing and industrial usage continue in forums organised with EUDAT, ELIXIR, OpenAIRE, Creative Commons and equity debates involving European University Association and national academies.

Category:Research infrastructures in Europe