Summary of the Call for Proposals for 5th PRACE Project Access and Multi-year Access (Tier-0)

For the first time since its birth on 23rd April 2010, the entire PRACE Tier-0 Research Infrastructure is available: a record-setting capacity of 15 Petaflop/s at peak performance on 6 architectures that complement each other:

• IBM Blue Gene/Q “JUQUEEN” (GCS@Jülich, Germany)
• Bull Bullx cluster “CURIE” (GENCI@CEA, France)
• Cray XE6 “HERMIT” (GCS@HLRS, Germany)
• SuperMUC (GCS@LRZ, Germany)
• MareNostrum (BSC, Spain)
• FERMI (CINECA, Italy)

The 5th Call also introduces two significant innovations:

• The possibility to apply for access for a 2-year period (multi-year access, renewable under conditions).
• The possibility for commercial companies to apply for access for Open R&D with the obligation to publish the results obtained in publicly available media.

The following criteria apply specifically to proposals from commercial companies:

• The company needs to have its head office and/or substantial R&D activity in Europe.
• Commercial companies may apply on their own or in collaboration with academia.
• Commercial companies applying on their own will be limited to a maximum of 5% of the total computing resources of a single PRACE system.

All applications – whether submitted by academia or by commercial companies – will be evaluated against the highest PRACE peer-review criteria: They must demonstrate scientific excellence and focus on topics of major relevance for European research and include elements of novelty, transformative aspects and have a recognised scientific impact. The PRACE 5th Call for Proposals can be found on the PRACE website here.