PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, has made sufficient progress in its aims that it can now apply for a grant under the European Union's 7th Framework Programme to start the implementation phase.
In October, PRACE demonstrated to a panel of external experts and the European Commission that the project made 'satisfactory progress in all areas' and 'that PRACE has the potential to have real impact on the future of European HPC, and the quality and outcome of European research that depends on HPC services'. Two months before the end of the project it met the eligibility to apply for a grant of 20 million Euros for the implementation phase of the permanent PRACE Research Infrastructure.
The future PRACE Research Infrastructure (RI) will consist of several world-class top-tier centres, managed as a single European entity. The infrastructure to be created by PRACE will form the top level of the European HPC ecosystem. It will offer competent support and a spectrum of system architectures to meet the requirements of different scientific domains and applications. It is expected that the PRACE RI will provide European scientists and technologists with world-class leadership supercomputers with capabilities equal to or better than those available in the USA, Japan, China, India and elsewhere in the world, in order to stay at the forefront of research.
