Feb. 24 — The 8th PRACE Regular Call for Proposals yielded 124 eligible proposals of which 44 were accepted. The trend for larger allocations to each project continues, increasing the competition for Tier-0 resources.

The 44 awarded projects are led by principal investigators from 11 different European countries. But in terms of nationality, PRACE is an even more inclusive Research Infrastructure, welcoming scientists and researchers from Norway, China, the United States and Russia as collaborators in several projects.

Seven overall scientific domains are represented: 7 projects are linked to the fields of Biochemistry, bioinformatics and Life Sciences; 10 to Chemistry; 4 to Earth System Sciences; 9 to Engineering; 5 to Fundamental Constituents of Matter; 1 to Mathematics and Computer Sciences; and 8 to Universe Sciences

Four projects are linked to industry, involving IFP Energies Nouvelles (as principal investigator), PSA Peugeot-Citroën, Renault, STMicroelectronics, General Electric (GE), and Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) (all 5 as collaborators).

The 8th Call saw some extremely large allocations on all 6 Tier-0 systems:

• On CURIE @ GENCI@CEA, France, with 40 million core hours, went to the project entitled, Linear Scaling and Massively Parallel Coupled-Cluster Calculations on the Leucine Transporter within a DEC framework, led by Dr. Thomas Kjaergaard of Aarhus University, Denmark.
• On FERMI @ CINECA, Italy, with 80 million core hours, went to the project entitled, LEAC – Laser-plasma Electron Acceleration for CILEX, led by Dr. Arnaud Beck of CNRS, France
• On Hermit @ GCS@HLRS, Germany, with 35 million core hours, went to the project entitled, HiThrust: High-pressure Turbine Heat Transfer Numerical Simulations, led by Prof. Richard Sandberg of the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.
• On JUQUEEN @ GCS@Jülich, Germany, with 35 million core hours, went to the project entitled, Leading hadronic contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, led by Dr. Laurent Lellouch of CNRS (INP) and Aix-Marseille University, France.
• On MareNostrum @ BSC, Spain, with 50 million core hours, went to the project entitled, EGOIST – Endogenic oil synthesis in the deep Earth interior: ab initio molecular dynamic simulation, led by Prof. Anatoly Belonoshko of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden.
• On SuperMuc @ GCS@Jülich, Germany, with 38 million core hours, went to the project entitled, WALLGRID – Wall turbulence interacting with grid-generated turbulence, led by Prof. J. Christos Vassilicos of Imperial College London, United Kingdom.

PRACE-supported project past and present are regularly linked to large-scale European initiatives, such as the FET Flagships and European Research Council (ERC) Grants.

Under the 8th Call, the project entitled PentaGate-L – Tracing lipid-mediated gating and permeation of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels in atomic detail, led by Dr. Marc Baaden of CNRS and Institut des Biomolécules Max Mousseron, France, is partner in the The Human Brain Project (http://www.humanbrainproject.eu – an FET Flagship). The project received 21 million core hours on CURIE @ GENCI@CEA, France.

Prof. Stephan Roche of the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology, Spain, with his project Longitudinal and Transverse Electronic Transport in Atomically Doped Graphene from First Principles, which received 22 million core hours on CURIE @ GENCI@CEA, France, is one of the early adopters of HPC in the FET Flagship Graphene (http://graphene-flagship.eu/)

Under the 8th Call PRACE awarded resources to 11 ERC-funded projects. Many other projects receive grants under various national programmes. This clearly shows the integration of PRACE in science and research, allowing researchers and scientists from academia and industry to benefit from support at national and European level in order to use the resources needed in each stage of their work.

Again, PRACE shows to be able to address the needs of post-processing the data coming from large-scale scientific instruments and the development of such instruments; such as the ALMA Radio Telescope (project by Dr. Troels Haugboelle of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction in Cadarache, France, which is a large international project involving partners from the EU, China, Russia, the USA, Japan, India and Korea, and to which the project by Dr. Marina Becoulet of CEA/IRFM is linked.

All information and the abstracts of the projects awarded under the 8th PRACE Call for Proposals can be found here: http://www.prace-ri.eu/PRACE-8th-Re…

About PRACE

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international non-profit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure provides a persistent world-class high performance computing service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry in Europe. The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 4 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). The Implementation Phase of PRACE receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements RI-261557, RI-283493 and RI-312763. For more information, see www.prace-ri.eu

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Source: PRACE