D2.3: Second Annual Report of WP2

This document, the “Second Annual Report of WP2”, of the PRACE Second Implementation Phase Project (PRACE-2IP) reports on the work undertaken in the final 12 month period from 1 September 2012 to 31 August 2013.
Work package 2 has built up the offering of access to diverse high-end national Tier-1 HPC resources to European researchers within the PRACE framework. The report elucidates the work in enhancing the management of the calls, the scientific evaluations, the allocation of resources and the monitoring of progress of the DECI projects. The goal has been to build an infrastructure both sustainable and scalable as the process adapts to a larger number of participants on both the service side and the researcher side. The number of participating sites, amount of resources and the number of proposals has been growing. The work has also been motivated by the continuation of the DECI programme in PRACE-3IP and by the negotiations on a Tier-1 Optional Programme by PRACE AISBL.
This document describes in detail the progress made in the second year, discusses problems met and solved, and proposes measures to enhance the processes in the future.
During the second year, a new system for project proposal submission has been prepared, with the help of other work packages. This system should be used and refined for subsequent DECI calls. A new peer review panel has been created and used for scientific evaluations for those proposals which are not nationally reviewed.
The document also discusses expanding the range of Tier-1 offerings to community and industry support, as described in the Description of Work.
The document lists statistics on the DECI proposals received and the DECI projects accepted during the PRACE-2IP project. The success of the DECI programme among the European researchers also indicates the need of such a service by PRACE.
The work done by PRACE-2IP WP2 has enabled the provision of shared Tier-1 resources to the European research community to be incorporated into the PRACE framework. The work will be continued by PRACE-3IP WP2, based on the practices established in this project, and probably later by a PRACE Tier-1 Optional Programme.