D2.3: PRACE and EuroHPC JU within the evolving European HPC ecosystem
Creators: name: Philippe Segers
name: Stelios Erotokritou
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Deliverable
HPC
Research infrastructure

description: This deliverable presents the position of the PRACE ESFRI landmark Research Infrastructure within the evolving European HPC ecosystem in the context of the Digital Single Market (DSM).
The European HPC ecosystem changed substantially in the last few years. New stakeholders joined the landscape, with the establishment of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU), where the European Commission and Member States invest considerably in developing a world class HPC and quantum computing ecosystem in Europe. These systems will provide valuable compute cycles to the European academic and industrial research communities and to public administrations. PRACE RI has established, over the past decade, a strong relationship with European academic and industrial users and HPC centres in a bottom-up approach and developed a sound, recognised and science-driven peer review process for the access to world-class computing and data management resources in Europe, with many interactions to our stakeholder's ecosystem.
After a short Introduction in Chapter 1, an update on PRACE stakeholder relationship within European HPC ecosystem is performed in Chapter 2 with regard to the three pillars of European HPC strategy, namely the Infrastructure, the Application and the Technology, providing a global overview of the European HPC ecosystem, the place of PRACE within it and the specific role of coordination activities that are performed by some specific projects. Chapter 3 presents new services for industry that could be offered, derived from a survey performed by PRACE, and presenting a catalogue of software dedicated for industry on Chapter 4. A more detailed presentation of PRACE updated Business Model, PRACE-EuroHPC relation and PRACE specific Services in the EuroHPC era are provided in D2.4, a complementary Deliverable.
These many interactions with PRACE stakeholders took place in the context of a global competition, on which some players already reach Exascale, but what will matter the most in the long run is the efficiency of a whole ecosystem to harvest the benefit of these tools for society, who can rely on a persistent Research Infrastructure, and where services are offered on an operational basis, on a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and transparent way, based on international best practice of access to world class RIs.
At this stage, it remains a huge challenge to understand this European HPC ecosystem, which is more fragmented than ever through many projects. For instance, feedback from PRACE main stakeholders, our users, through PRACE User Forum, PRACE Scientific Steering Committee and Industrial Advisory Committee is the lack of clarity of this European HPC ecosystem. PRACE aim, within this Deliverable, is to contribute to provide a humble tool to understand who are the main actors of this ecosystem, what are their relations (if any), and what level of coordination is put in place to ensure some coherency between them.
PRACE, with a clear proposal of services and activities, integrates the active involvement of user communities to support their scientific discoveries and research developments. Through an open and transparent governance, PRACE provides to these communities (represented by the Scientific Steering Committee and the Industrial Advisory Committee), jointly with HPC agencies and centres, the power to drive the PRACE activities. This also guarantees that principles underpinning scientific excellence are applied to the peer review processes distributing resources to the users.
In this context, the mission of PRACE is to enable high-impact scientific discovery and research and development across all disciplines to enhance European competitiveness for the benefit of society.