D7.2.1: Technical Support for DECI Projects

This deliverable reports on technical support for DECI (Distributed European Computing Initiative) projects in the first year of the PRACE-2IP project. During this period three DECI calls were launched: DECI7 (pilot call), DECI8 and DECI9. As a result 35 DECI7 projects and 33 DECI8 projects were accepted and have already started their runs and made progress successfully on assigned PRACE systems, while the applications for the DECI9 call are in the process of scientific evaluation. PRACE experts engaged in T7.2 of WP7 continuously help the users of DECI7 and DECI8 projects to run their codes on the assigned PRACE systems. 15 out of 35 DECI7 and 13 out of 33 DECI8 projects requested enabling help for their projects going beyond the usual assistance in getting access and porting the code to the execution platform. This requires an engagement of T7.2 PRACE experts for up of 6 months in optimizing and/or scaling the given code. This work has been successfully accomplished for DECI7 projects that will finish their runs by the end of October 2012, however T7.2 continues to keep track of the progress of DECI7 projects and to offer help if the need arises. The work on DECI8 projects is ongoing as the allocation period will persist until May 2013. The enabling work on DECI9 projects will start from November 2012. T7.2 is not only responsible for enabling but also for the technical evaluation of DECI applications. The technical evaluations of all DECI7, DECI8 and DECI9 applications have already been successfully completed. The results of these technical evaluations have been communicated to the scientific evaluation committees and have been taken into account in the final selection process.
The whole work process of T7.2 is in close cooperation with T2.2 of WP2 and with WP6 of the PRACE-2IP project.