PRACE Project Update

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PRACE Project Update

• Thomas Eickermann, Forschungszentrum JülichHPC
  User Forum , October 2009

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Outline

• What is PRACE
• Where we stand
• What comes next
• Questions

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Outline

• What is PRACE
• Where of we stand
• What comes next
• Questions

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Supercomputing Drives Science through Simulation
Environment Weather/ Climatology Pollution /
Ozone Hole
Ageing Society Medicine Biology
Energy Plasma Physics Fuel Cells
Materials/ Inf. Tech Spintronics Nano-science
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HET The Scientific Case

• Weather, Climatology, Earth Science
• degree of warming, scenarios for our future
  climate.
• understand and predict ocean properties and
  variations
• weather and flood events
• Astrophysics, Elementary particle physics, Plasma
  physics
• systems, structures which span a large range of
  different length and time scales
• quantum field theories like QCD, ITER
• Material Science, Chemistry, Nanoscience
• understanding complex materials, complex
  chemistry, nanoscience
• the determination of electronic and transport
  properties
• Life Science
• system biology, chromatin dynamics, large scale
  protein dynamics, protein association and
  aggregation, supramolecular systems, medicine
• Engineering
• complex helicopter simulation, biomedical flows,
  gas turbines and internal combustion engines,
  forest fires, green aircraft,
• virtual power plant

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A recent success

• Calculation of hadron masses based on first
  principles on the 16 Rack BlueGene/P (200
  TFlops) in Juelich
• For the first time, sufficient compute capability
  to include enough physics in the computational
  model, so that the calculated masses are
  consistent with the experimentally known
  masses(Fodor et al.)
• Confirmation of QCD theory
• Rated as one of the top 10 scientific
  breakthroughs 2008 by Science
• This happened in the first year of operation of
  the machine

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Europes current position in HPC
Aggregated LINPACK Performancein PetaFlop/s in
November Top 500 Lists
PFlops
91 of European HPC-power is within
PRACEcountries
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PRACE A Partnership with a Vision

• Provide world-class HPC systems for word-class
  science
• Support Europe in attaining global leadership in
  public and private research and development
• Create a world-leading persistent high-end HPC
  infrastructure
• Deploy 3 5 systems of the highest performance
  level (tier-0)
• First European Petaflop/s system deployed in
  Jülich
• Ensure a diversity of architectures to meet the
  needs of European user communities
• Provide support and training

and a Mission
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PRACE Historyand first steps
HPCEUR
HET
PRACE Preparatory
PRACE MoU
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
EU-Grant INFSO-RI-211528, 10 Mio.
PRACE Implementation Phase
Phase
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Foreseen PRACE Tier-0 centres providing
HPC-capability service in a legal entity
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HPC-Service is an item on the ESFRI Roadmap

• The European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures
  is the first comprehensive definition at the
  European level
• Research Infrastructures areone of the crucial
  pillars of the European Research Area
• A European HPC service impact foreseen
• strategic competitiveness
• attractiveness for researchers
• supporting industrial development

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The PRACE Initiative (MoU)

• 2007 April, 16 Memorandum of Understanding
  signed by 14 European member states in Berlin
• 2008 France, Germany, Spain, The
  Netherlands and UKreconfirmed their commitment
  for establishing an European HPC Research
  Infrastructure
• Italy became a PrincipalPartner in September
• 2009 6 new European member states have joined
  the PRACE initiative (Bulgaria and Czech Republic
  joined in September)
• more are interested

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The PRACE Project

• EU approved the PRACE Preparatory Phase Project
• (Grant INFSO-RI-211528)

• 16 Partners from 14 countries
• Project duration January 2008 December 2009
• Project budget 20 M , EC funding 10 M
• Kickoff Jülich, January 29-30, 2008

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PRACE Project Objectives in a Nutshell

• Perform all legal, administrative, and technical
  work to create a legal entity and start
  providing Tier-0 HPC services in 2010
• PRACE project tasks
• Define the legal administrative framework (WP2)
• Dissemination, outreach training (WP3)
• Cooperate with the European HPC ecosystem (WP2/3)
• Distributed computing (WP4)
• Prototype system assessment (WP5)
• Software enabling for prototype systems (WP6)
• Procurement strategy Petaflop/s systems for
  2009/2010 (WP7)
• Future Petaflop/s technologies, vendor
  cooperation (WP8)

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Outline

• What is PRACE
• Where we stand
• What comes next
• Questions

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After the First Successful Year

• Project review March 5-6, 2009, in Brussels
• A full day of presentation of the project results
  of year1
• Coordinator and all work packages presented
• PRACE is the collaborative achievement of over
  250 persons at the 16 partner sites
• Expertise includes a Chairman of the Board,
  (coordinator), executives, scientists,
  programmers, legal experts,
• The project made very good progress

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Selected Results and Highlights

• Applications
• Systems/Architectures
• Training and Outreach

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Categorisation of Applications

• Benchmark applications should be representative
  of European HPC usage
• We conducted surveys of PRACE partners HPC
  systems and major applications
• Collecting various interesting data for 24
  systems and 69 applications
• Quantitative basis for selecting representative
  applications
• Disseminated as Technical Report

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Representative Benchmark Suite

• Defined a set of applications benchmarks
• To be used in the procurement process for
  Petaflop/s systems
• 12 core applications, plus 8 additional
  applications
• Core NAMD, VASP, QCD, CPMD, GADGET,
  Code_Saturne, TORB, ECHAM5, NEMO, CP2K, GROMACS,
  N3D
• Additional AVBP, HELIUM, TRIPOLI_4, PEPC, GPAW,
  ALYA, SIESTA, BSIT
• Each application will be ported to appropriate
  subset of prototypes
• Synthetic benchmarks for architecture evaluation
• Computation, mixed-mode, IO, bandwidth, OS,
  communication
• Applications and Synthetic benchmarks integrated
  into JuBE
• Juelich Benchmark Environment
• Benchmark suite is updated based on scaling
  results

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Mapping Applications to Architectures

• Identified affinities and priorities
• Based on the application analysis - expressed in
  a condensed, qualitative way
• Need for different general purpose systems
• There are promising emerging architectures
• Will be more quantitative after benchmark runs on
  prototypes

E estimated
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Prototypes for Petaflop/s systems in 2009/2010

• IBM BlueGene/P (GCS-FZJ)
• 01-2008 / 06-2009

• IBM Power6 (SARA)
• 07-2008

• Cray XT5 (CSC)
• 11-2008

• IBM Cell/Power (BSC)
• 12-2008

• NEC SX9, vector part (HLRS)
• 02-2009

Intel Nehalem/Xeon (CEA/FZJ)06-2009
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Procurement Strategy, Cost Estimates

• Analysis of European procurement procedures
  completed, best practices
• Work in progress
• Definition of general procurement process
• Definition of selection and evaluation criteria
• Evaluation process for offers by vendors
• Market watch what will it take to be in the Top
  5 / Top 10 in 2010 2011 ?
• TCO estimates based on market survey, vendor
  input and partners experience, repeated annually
• Overall goals are consistent with committed
  funding of 100 M/a

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Prototypes for Systems beyond 2010 selected
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Prototypes selected (contd)
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Outreach and Education
Industry seminars 1st Seminar Sept. 3, 2008
Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2nd Seminar Sept. 7-8,
2009 Toulouse, France
Summer winter schools Stockholm, Athens
PRACE booth at SC08
PRACE website
PRACE booths ISC, ICT, SC,
1st Industry seminar, 3.9.2008
ICT 2008, PRACE-Booth
PRACE Winter Schoolat the OTE academy,
Athens26-29.8.2009
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PRACE Summer School Stockholm
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Outline

• What is PRACE
• Where we stand
• What comes next
• Questions

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Next Steps

• Contracts for the legal entity are in final
  negotiation, signature planned still in 2009
• Temporary seat in Lisbon
• PRACE Tier-0 Infrastructure will become operable
  during first half of 2010
• Small HQ in charge of organisational, financial
  and legal tasks and Peer Review
• Tier-0 services for the Scientific Community
  provided by the hosting members of the legal
  entity.
• Implementation and further development will be
  major task in the next years co-funded by the EC

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How will the Infrastructure look like in a year
from now ?

• An association with its seat in Lisbon
• 20 members
• Performing pan-European Peer-Review
• Coordinating national procurements of Tier-0
  machines
• Coordinating pan-European training and user
  support
• First Tier-0 Machine
• 1 PFlops BG/P in Juelich_at_Gauss
• Supporting work in EC-funded implementation phase
  project

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Accessing the future PRACE RI

• Disclaimer this is work in progress
• Access Model
• Based on peer-review the best systems for the
  best science
• Three types of resource allocations
• Test / evaluation access
• Project access for a specific project, grant
  period 1 year
• Programme access resources managed by a
  community
• Free-of-charge for European scientific
  communities

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Accessing the future PRACE RI cont.

• Disclaimer this is work in progress
• Access Models for Commercial users ( lt 10)
• Peer Review based, free of charge if results are
  made public (similar to US INCITE programme)
• Paid Access
• Funding of the Infrastructure
• Mainly national funding through partner countries
• European contribution
• Monitor relation between contribution and usage

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How to get involved ?

• If you are a national coordinator of HPC
  activities
• and your country is not yet a member
• Join the PRACE Initiative !
• Port your code to the PRACE Prototypes
• Prototypes are mainly be used project-internally,
  but
• Prototypes are also made available to selected
  users for testing/porting purposes using a
  light-weight peer-review process
• See http//www.prace-project.eu/prototype-access
• Participate in the PRACE training dissemination
  events
• 5 Code Porting Workshops
• Meet us at the PRACE booth at SC09

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Summary

• In its first 18 months, the project had
• major achievements in allareas
• raised significant awareness with all
  stakeholders
• reconfirmed the commitment of the Governments
• PRACE is well prepared to
• master the future challenges

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PRACE All-Hands meetingFebruary 2009