Call for Proposals reflects magnitude of PRACE 2

Today the European PRACE initiative announced that their 14th Call for Proposals yielded 113 eligible proposals of which 59 were awarded a total of close to 2 thousand million core hours. This brings the total number of projects awarded by PRACE to 524. Taking into account the 3 multi-year projects from the 12th Call that were renewed and the 10 million core hours reserved for Centres of Excellence, the total amount of core hours awarded by PRACE to more than 14 thousand million.

The 59 newly awarded projects are led by principal investigators from 15 different European countries. In addition, two projects are led by PIs from New Zealand and the USA.

This Call was the first under the recently ratified PRACE 2 Program. As a new feature of this program, 3 project proposals are tagged Candidate Tier-0 and will receive tailored assistance from a High-Level Support Team (HLST) to push their excellent research towards more advanced use of world-class high performance computers.

Highlights:

  • Seven scientific domains are represented: 8 projects are linked to the fields of Biochemistry, Bioinformatics and Life Sciences; 22 to Chemistry; 4 to Earth System Sciences; 4 to Engineering; 9 to Fundamental Constituents of Matter; and 12 to Universe Sciences.
  • The 14th PRACE Call for the first time included the Piz Daint system from CSCS, Switzerland, PRACE’s newest Hosting Member. 8 projects were awarded a total of close to 6 million node hours (401 million core hours) on this system. Hosting Members BSC (Spain) and CINECA (Italy) have recently upgraded their systems (MareNostrum and Marconi respectively) and these are now also available for PRACE Calls.
  • Amongst the renewed multi-year projects from Call 12, Charge and Spin Hall Kubo Conductivity by Order N Real Space Methods led by Dr. Stephan Roche is linked to the FET Graphene Flagship program. The project received 20 million core hours on MareNostrum @ BSC, Spain.
  • One PRACE-awarded project is linked to the FET Human Brain Flagship program: CBNR – CereBellar Network Reconstruction led by Prof. Egidio D’Angelo. The project received 32 million core hours on Juqueen @ GCS @ JSC, Germany.
  • One PRACE-awarded project is linked to the Autism Research and Technology Initiative: iHART –Characterization of genetic risk variants in ASD families using a reference-free approach led by Dr. Daniel Geschwind. Taking into account its potential societal impact, it was awarded 5.5 million core hours on MareNostrum @ BSC, Spain.
  • Two projects are led by PIs from industry: EDF (France, energy-related R&D in the field of materials) and Cenaero (Belgium, public/private R&D centre in aeronautics/combustion), and another involves a Co-PI from industry: Termo Fluids S.L. (Spain, SME in fluid mechanics).
  • The PRACE 14th Call awarded resources to 9 ERC and 2 Marie Sklodowska Curie funded projects, 2 H2020 funded projects, 2 EC FET Flagship programs, 2 projects with links to the MaX Centre of Excellence and 2 projects with links to EUROfusion and the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan.

All information and the abstracts of the projects awarded under the 14th PRACE Call for Proposals will be online soon.

Sign up for our insideHPC Newsletter