PRACE
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
How to apply for 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.
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 |