The mission of PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) is to enable high-impact scientific discovery and engineering research and development across all disciplines to enhance European competitiveness for the benefit of society. PRACE seeks to realise this mission by offering world class computing and data management resources and services through a peer review process.
PRACE also seeks to strengthen the European users of HPC in industry through various initiatives. PRACE has a strong interest in improving energy efficiency of computing systems and reducing their environmental impact.
PRACE Research Infrastructure (RI)
PRACE is established as an international not-for-profit association (aisbl) with its seat in Brussels. It has 26 member countries whose representative organisations 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. To find out more about the PRACE organisation go here.
The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 5 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, ETH Zurich/CSCS representing Switzerland, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). Four hosting members (France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) secured funding for the initial period from 2010 to 2015. In 2016 a fifth Hosting Member, ETH Zurich/CSCS (Switzerland) opened its system via the PRACE Peer Review Process to researchers from academia and industry. In pace with the needs of the scientific communities and technical developments, systems deployed by PRACE are continuously updated and upgraded to be at the apex of HPC technology. To find out more about these systems, go here.
The PRACE project partners have received or are receiving EC funding under the PRACE Preparatory and Implementation Phase Projects (PRACE-1IP, 2010-2012, RI-261557 | PRACE-2IP, 2011-2013, RI-283493 | PRACE-3IP, 2012-2017, RI-312763 | PRACE-4IP, 2015-2017, 653838 | PRACE-5IP, 2017-2019, 730913 | PRACE-6IP, 2019-2021, 823767). The total funding of the PRACE Projects amounts to €132M over 9 years (2010 – 2019) of which €125M is provided by the European Commission (EC).