Nov. 20, 2019 — The PRACE Board of Directors, the XSEDE Senior Management Team and the RIST Kobe Centre are now inviting requests from new or established collaborative teams spanning Europe, the U.S.A, and/or Japan whose research could be accelerated by coordinated access to staff expertise and/or high-end HPC resources from PRACE, XSEDE and RIST.

In 2017, these three parties signed a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on information exchange to promote the use of advanced research computing. In line with the objectives of this Memorandum, PRACE, XSEDE and RIST will provide coordinated support to research teams, spanning two or all three of the infrastructures, to facilitate the effective and efficient use of resources in pursuit of their research objectives.

In this initial opportunity, research teams can request staff support services from all three organizations as well as small-scale allocations on resources available via PRACE and XSEDE. We expect that awards from this opportunity will be used to help the teams prepare for future larger-scale allocation proposals.

Requests can encompass any combination of staff support across the three infrastructure organizations and small-scale allocations on available resources, equivalent to PRACE Preparatory Access and XSEDE Startup allocations. Resource allocations for HPCI systems managed by RIST in Japan are not part of this call; if required for the collaborative activity, research teams must have access to use resources of the HPCI systems as part of an existing award.

All submissions must have collaborators that span at least two or all three of the regions, and existing PRACE, XSEDE, and RIST eligibility rules still apply: Access to PRACE resources or support requires eligible Europe-based collaborators, XSEDE access or support requires eligible U.S.A.-based collaborators, and RIST support requires eligible Japan-based collaborators.

The request should articulate the anticipated benefits to the collaboration of the joint support efforts from the infrastructure organizations. The selected proposals will receive support from PRACE, XSEDE, and RIST, as appropriate, to improve the scientific productivity of the collaborators.

Requests can take one of two forms:

1. Collaborating teams spanning Europe and the U.S.A. can request access to resources available via PRACE and XSEDE in the form of Preparatory Access and Startup allocations, respectively.
2. Collaborating teams involving collaborators spanning at least two of the regions (Europe, the U.S.A, and Japan) may submit Requests for staff support services.

All requests can be submitted via http://prx-submit.xras.xsede.org starting November 25, 2019 but must be submitted no later than December 20, 2019 by 11:59pm in the submitters local time zone. Submissions require CVs from the lead investigator from each region, and a proposal document which discusses the requirements of the request submission and addresses the review criteria against which requests will be evaluated. Submissions should be no longer than two pages and address the following points:

1. Identify the collaborating teams in Europe, the U.S.A., and/or Japan; collaborating teams must span at least two of these regions.
2. A brief description of the collaborative research activity.
3. The technical challenges the team is facing and rationale for the request of staff support.
4. The effort the collaborating team will provide to the collaborative support activity and an estimation of expected support needs.
5. The justification for access to resources in Europe and/or the U.S.A. For requests involving collaborators from Japan, this should include a list of involved resources including the project name and the project ID number of the existing award in Japan.
6. A plan for accessing PRACE, XSEDE, or HPCI resources, when applicable and if access is not part of the request.
7. Mechanisms for monitoring progress and reviewing outcomes

Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Potential impact of proposed staff support and resource allocations to the collaboration in terms of scientific productivity.
• Technical feasibility.
• Commitment of the proposing groups to contribute to the effort.
• Required efforts by the PRACE, XSEDE and RIST teams.

Based on the assessment of the requests against the review criteria listed above, and available resources, PRACE, XSEDE, and RIST will select applications for support. Applicants requesting support services only will be informed by January 24, 2020 regarding the result of the assessment, including reasons for selection or rejection. The start date for these projects will be February 1, 2020. Applicants submitting requests involving allocations via XSEDE and PRACE will be informed by February 14, 2020 regarding the result of the assessment, including reasons for selection or rejection. The start date for these projects will be March 1, 2020.

The final awards of allocations of computing resources will be made as XSEDE Startup awards for U.S.A.-based resources and PRACE Preparatory Access awards for Europe-based resources. Final awards will also include appropriate allocations of PRACE, XSEDE and RIST staff support to collaborations. Individual access to resources by members of a research team will be governed by PRACE, XSEDE, and RIST policies, as appropriate.

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 five PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, ETH Zurich/CSCS representing Switzerland, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). The Implementation Phase of PRACE receives funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (2014-2020) under grant agreement 823767. For more information, see www.prace-ri.eu

About RIST

Research Organization for Information Science and Technology (RIST) is the designated Registered Institution for Facilities Use Promotion of the flagship computer (The Specific High-Speed Computer Facilities) and the representative for the operation of High Performance Computing Infrastructure of Japan (HPCI). HPCI, established in 2012 as Japanese national HPC infrastructure, is a system connecting the Tier 0 flagship system and part of the Tier 1 major Universities and National Lab systems by high speed academic network. (Operation of the flagship computer “K” was terminated in August 2019.) See www.rist.or.jp/ehome.html for more information on RIST and www.hpci-office.jp/folders/english for more information on HPCI.

Contact point for Joint Call
helpdesk[-at-]hpci-office.jp

About XSEDE

The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is an National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded virtual organization that integrates and coordinates the sharing of advanced digital services – including supercomputers and high-end visualization and data analysis resources – with researchers nationally to support science.

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Source: PRACE