BERLIN, Germany, April 29 – The Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS), a hosting member of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE), continues to significantly contribute to European large-scale scientific and engineering research activities. The 10th PRACE Regular Call for Proposals resulted in GCS supporting 14 outstanding scientific research projects from eight European countries with a total of 246.93 million core hours of computing time on GCS supercomputers Hornet of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and SuperMUC of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, Garching/Munich (LRZ).
Eight of the 14 projects assigned to GCS resources will be served by HPC system Hornet of HLRS which provides in sum 176.8 million core hours of computing time for these activities. LRZ system SuperMUC will support six projects from the 10th PRACE Call with a total of 70.1 million core hours. Researchers awarded access to the GCS supercomputing infrastructures may use their computing time allocation for a period of 12 months, starting immediately.
Two Simulation Projects by German Research Institutes
The largest individual allocation of computing core hours awarded on a GCS supercomputer went to researchers of the Institute of Simulation Techniques and Scientific Computing at the University of Siegen. Professor Dr.-Ing. Sabine Roller and her team were granted more than 42 million core hours on HLRS system Hornet for their project APAM (Aquatic Purification Assisted by Membranes). This research work, which aims at investigating the boundary layer at ion separating membranes in the electrodialysis desalination process, builds on a simulation project which recently had been carried out on HPC system Hornet too focussing on the electrodialysis desalination process in general. The additional computing time received through PRACE will be leveraged for a detailed simulation of the boundary layers with their complex physical interactions and possible extensions to it.
A second German research project assigned to a GCS supercomputer is headed up by Prof. Peter Hauschildt of the Hamburg Observatory (University of Hamburg). To simulate images and spectra of stars and extrasolar planets with NLTE (non-local thermodynamic equilibrium) radiation transport calculations using their general purpose model atmosphere code PHOENIX/3D, the Hamburg based team was granted 28.8 million core hours of computing time, also on Hornet.
HPC system SuperMUC designates the largest individual allocation of core hours to project “CLIMATE SPHINX” (CLIMATE Stochastic Physics HIgh resolutioN eXperiments). Led by principal investigator Professor Dr. Jost von Hardenberg of the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC) at the National Research Council (CNR) in Bologna/Italy, this research activity was awarded 20.1 million core hours of computing time on the LRZ supercomputer.
The remaining 11 research projects allowed access to the German HPC resources are under leadership of scientists from the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain with two projects each and from France, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Australia (in collaboration with a UK-based research institute). The supported research topics cover areas such as Engineering, Biochemistry and Life Sciences, Chemical Sciences and Materials, amongst others.
The complete list of allocations of the PRACE 10th Regular Call can be viewed at http://www.prace-ri.eu/prace-10th-project-call/. All proposals awarded access to the Tier-0 infrastructure of the European network of HPC systems are at the highest level of scientific and technical maturity. Evaluated by leading scientists and highly qualified technical experts, all proposals submitted in response to the bi-annual PRACE calls must undergo a very strict and clearly defined peer-review process in which the scientific excellence of the proposed projects is assessed.
About GCS
The Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) combines the three national supercom- puting centres HLRS (High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart), JSC (Jülich Supercomputing Centre), and LRZ (Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, Garching near Munich) into Germany’s Tier-0 supercomputing institution. Concertedly, the three centres provide the largest and most powerful supercomputing infrastructure in all of Europe to serve a wide range of industrial and research activities in various disciplines. They also provide top-class training and education for the national as well as the European High Performance Computing (HPC) community. GCS is the German member of PRACE (Partnership for Advance Computing in Europe), an international non-profit association consisting of 25 member countries, whose representative organizations 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.
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Source: GCS