PRACE’s 14th call drives forward broad range of research

20 Apr 2017 | News
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) has opened up greater access to supercomputer time for researchers around Europe

The 14th PRACE call yielded 113 eligible proposals of which 59 were awarded a total of close to two thousand million core hours of computer time, bringing the total number of projects awarded time on Europe’s supercomputers to 524.

Taking into account that three multi-year projects from the 12th Call that were renewed and that ten million core hours are reserved for centres of excellence, the total amount of core hours awarded by PRACE is more than 14 thousand million.

Fifty nine newly awarded projects are led by principal investigators from 15 different European countries. In addition, two projects are led by researchers from New Zealand and the US.

The call was the first under the recently ratified PRACE 2 Programme

Seven scientific domains are represented, with eight biochemistry, bioinformatics and life sciences projects, 21 in chemistry; four earth sciences; five engineering; nine fundamental constituents of matter; and 12 in astronomy.

The 14th PRACE call for the first time included the Piz Daint, a Cray XC30 supercomputer at the Swiss National Super-computing Centre, PRACE's newest hosting member. Eight projects were awarded a total of close to 401 million core hours on this system. Hosting members BSC (Spain) and CINECA (Italy) have recently upgraded their systems (MareNostrum and Marconi respectively) and these are now also available for PRACE Calls.

Amongst the renewed multi-year projects from call 12 is one linked to the EU’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Graphene Flagship programme and another to the FET Human Brain Flagship.

Another winner is linked to the Autism Research and Technology Initiative: iHART - Characterisation of genetic risk variants in families, which was awarded 5.5 million core hours.

Two projects are led by researchers from industry: EDF (France, energy-related R&D in the field of materials) and Cenaero (Belgium, public/private R&D centre in aeronautics/combustion).

The PRACE 14th call awarded supercomputer time to nine ERC and two Marie Sklodowska Curie funded projects, two Horizon 2020-funded projects and two projects with links to EUROfusion and the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan.

The 14th call for for PRACE Project Access was open from 10 October to 21 November 2016. Selected proposals will receive allocations to PRACE resources from 3 April 2017 to 31 March 2018.

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