PRACE

How to apply for European PRACE resources

Preparatory access

Before one can receive access to millions of core hours on some of the world's fastest computers, one has to first apply for something known as Preparatory access. This process will provide up to 200,000 core hours for a researcher to test out their code on any number of selected European super-computers. There are 4 different subsets of preparatory access but two of them will provide access within 2-3 weeks of submission.

Normal access

After one has proven that their code will run properly on a PRACE supercomputer, one can apply for normal access (also known as tier-0 access) which can even be 50M core hours. The application procedure is described here, and there exists an application guide here. Unfortunately, this process can sometimes take up to 9 months and can be quite competitive and therefore one doesn't always get awarded the hours they request. PRACE produces a call for access every half year and one can find the latest call here.

Cy-tera

In addition to the PRACE system, there is a smaller system that is available for Israeli researchers, located in Cyprus. It is known as Cy-tera, which provides access to a 35Tflop system. They too have something known as preparatory access, which then leads to production access. Israeli researchers have found easy access to super computer resources via the Cy-tera system.

Cluster of IUCC

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 5 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, CSCS representing Switzerland, 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 agreement RI-312763 and from the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (2014-2020) under grant agreement 653838. For more information see www.prace-ri.eu

Technical Details

Model	Number of Severs	Processors	Cores each node	Frequency processor	Memory / node	HDD per node
IBM x3450 servers	64	Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5472	8	3.0 GHz	64 GB	1TB

Performance

Parmeter	Value
Processor Number	E5472
Processor Base Frequency	3.00 GHz
Cache	12 MB L2
Bus speed	1600 MHz FSB
FSB parity	Yes
TDP	80 W
VID Voltage Range	0.850V-1.3500V

MOAB General info MOAB Quick Start Guide