PRACE Statistics
The Council of PRACE has unanimously approved the publication of various PRACE user statistics. The tables and graphs below represent the awarded projects per country, and the awarded hours per country. PRACE will update these statistics periodically, adding information on each successive Call for Proposals as it becomes available.
Last update: January 2023
Data per Country
The graph to the left shows the following data per country:
- Projects awarded % of total projects awarded (blue bars)
- Resources awarded % of total resources (orange bars)
The graph includes data from the Early Access Call (EAC) as well as from PRACE Project Access Calls 1 through 24.
Awarded projects per country
To attribute a PRACE awarded project to a certain country, a “mixed metric” is used:
- The nationality of the principal investigator (meaning the country of his/her research centre) counts for 30%
- The countries of all the centres participating in the project count for 70%
- Each centre counts for an equal share of the 70%. If two departments of the same university participate, they count as two centres.
An example
A project is led by a PI from Germany. There are 3 collaborating centres, one from Spain, one from United Kingdom and one from United States. The 4 participating countries are counted as follows:
| Country | Count | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 30% for the PI 0.25 of 70% for the collaboration | 47.5% |
| Spain | 0.25 of 70% for the collaboration | 17.5% |
| UK | 0.25 of 70% for the collaboration | 17.5% |
| USA | 0.25 of 70% for the collaboration | 17.5% |
These calculations are made for each project. The results per country are added up and divided by the total number of awarded projects.
Awarded core hours per country
The awarded core hours per country are counted according to the Linpack benchmark for each system. The following steps are taken to obtain this percentage:
1) The Linpack benchmark for each system is calculated via the equation:
2) Second, the value of the Linpack benchmark is multiplied with the total core hours awarded to the project on each system (this can be only one system or several):
3) The outcome of this calculation is then multiplied with the percentage for the system’s hosting country (obtained via the “mixed metric”) to arrive at the performance per system.
4) The performances in each project for each system are then added up and divided by the total awarded hours for all systems (grand total).
Please note that the PRACE Council has appointed a working group to develop a benchmark with a balanced set of Tier-0 applications, with real scientific user data. This new benchmark will replace the Linpack benchmark, which is application-naïve, does not represent scientific code performances and is subject to overclocking and accelerators.
Disclaimer and copyright
PRACE publishes the above statistics under the principle of transparency of its Peer Review Process. Re-publication of these statistics is allowed as long as the source is correctly referenced. PRACE cannot take responsibility for errors and omissions in quotations by third parties.
Contact
If you wish to obtain further information about these statistics or the PRACE Peer Review Process, please contact the PRACE Board of Directors via bod[at]prace-ri.eu.
PRACE Key Performance Indicators
Given the evolution of computational power in the PRACE portfolio, PRACE-related statistics are essential to highlight the impact of PRACE on HPC-based research, HPC know-how in Europe, and European Industry engagement in HPC.
PRACE’s Impact on Evolving Research
Offer and demand of resources
Figure 1 shows the evolution of PRACE resources offered and requested in Project Access Calls. PRACE first provided HPC services in 2010 with contributions from German Tier-0 systems. France, Italy, and Spain added their contributions gradually.
This is reflected in the constant increase of HPC resources offered by PRACE to the scientific community until the 6th Project Access Call, where a stable regime was reached. The phasing out of the initial phase of PRACE (known as PRACE 1) started in the 10th Call, while the second phase of PRACE (known as PRACE 2) only started in Call 14. This is reflected in the valley from the 10th to the 13th Call.
With PRACE 2, a substantial increase in the amount of available resources can be seen, thanks to the renewed contributions of all the original PRACE Hosting Members and Switzerland as a new Hosting Member. A new stable regime was reached quickly, and starting with the 14th Call an average of 2 billion core hours per Call was offered to the HPC scientific community. This was increased to 2.5 billion core hours with the 19th Call, due to the inclusion of novel, denser architectures into PRACE’s standard offer.
Figure 1 also shows that this increase in offer was not directly followed by an increase in awarded resources since not all researchers were technically ready to use the novel architectures. After Call 21, the gap started closing with all offered resources – at times even increased beyond the initial offer – being awarded.The demand for HPC resources has always exceeded the capacity of PRACE to provide them. The average oversubscription of PRACE Project Access Calls is 2:1, reaching a 5:1 ratio during the phasing-out of PRACE 1. This constant interest in PRACE resources has been driving the periodic upgrades of and additions to new systems that PRACE offers, specifically concerning the PRACE 2 programme.
Number of projects
During the initial phase of PRACE (known as PRACE 1), the number of project applications received via PRACE Calls for Proposals for Project Access exhibited a clear overall upward trend. The phasing-in of PRACE 1 naturally incited an increase in demand for Tier-0 resources. This is particularly evident up to the 8th Call, with a large sustained increase between the 6th and 8th Call, followed by a slight decrease (Figure 2).
A downward trend of projects that are rejected for being below the scientific excellence threshold, is noted, displaying the maturity of submitted proposals, in which researchers put more effort into the quality of their proposals, as a reaction to increased competition. Moreover, the evolution reflects the positive outcomes of PRACE Preparatory Access Calls (including access type C) that enable prior technical support for application and scalability tests.
Figure 2 also highlights an increase in projects that are rejected even if they are above the scientific threshold, particularly after the 6th Call. This is correlated with the increase in total applications.
During the phasing-out of PRACE 1, the number of available core hours dropped (Figure 1), and this decreased the demand, as researchers anticipated an even stronger competition for the remaining resources. This trend was mitigated in the 12th and 13th Call when PRACE Hosting Members made additional core hours available during the preparation of the PRACE 2 programme, which started in the 14th Call.
With the start of PRACE 2, there has been an increase in the number of projects awarded, which, combined with the increase of resources that started in the 14th Call (Figure 1), shows the clear success of the second phase of PRACE. In this second phase, the scientific objectives of PRACE were updated to increase the scope and excellence of the projects awarded.
The minimum size of an allocation and the scientific threshold was increased. The decrease in proposals submitted and the apparent decrease in their quality in Call 15 is a positive sign of the success of this scientific update. Its positive effect is also reflected in the subsequent narrowing of the gap between received proposals and proposals meeting the scientific excellence requirements starting from Call 18, a development that points to the overall increased quality of the applications. For the most recent calls, not all projects above the scientific threshold could be awarded as PRACE returns to a situation where all offered resources are awarded.
Despite the competition, demand for PRACE resources remains high and all PRACE calls are oversubscribed (Figure 1), indicating that scientists consider Tier-0 access an essential asset to their work.
Recurring users
PRACE also keeps track of Project Access proposals submitted by recurrent principal investigators (PIs) (Figure 3). This KPI is created by checking for each submission in each Call if a PI is new to PRACE.The ratio of first-time applicants is relatively high: less than 50% of the PIs who submitted to the two Project Access Calls in 2021 were recurrent applicants to a PRACE Call for Proposals for Project Access.
This means that more than half of project proposals are submitted by new users. This indicates that PRACE is continuously attracting new PIs, while remaining essential support for existing users. Globally, a certain downward trend in the number of new applicants can be observed until the 13th Call, moving to an upward trend with the onset of PRACE 2.
International transnational cooperation
Nearly two-thirds (62%) of PRACE resources are awarded to “foreign projects”. Foreign projects are defined as projects with principal investigators (PIs) from a different country (recorded as the country of the PI’s primary institution) than the HPC system on which the research is executed.
The ratio of awarded foreign projects remained relatively stable over time, showing an increase from Call 22 (Figure 4). This shows that the nationality of the PI’s institution does not influence the chances of a project being awarded. It also demonstrates PRACE’s impact on the enhancement of European and international collaboration.
Co-funding
PRACE awards are normally developed within larger scientific initiatives, where HPC resources are part of the needs of the project. PRACE asks Project Access awardees to declare such synergies.
On average, 73% of PRACE users have declared that their awards are complemented with EC, national or international funds (Figure 5). The major fraction, corresponding to national funding, has shown a slight downward trend after the 10th Call and has since stabilised from the 16th Call onwards. EC funding shows a slowly increasing trend, coinciding with the implementation of the H2020 programme. International funding remains low, with 9% being the average contribution.
PRACE’s impact on growing know-how in Europe
Since 2008, PRACE has been engaged in providing top-class education and training for computational scientists in Europe through the PRACE Training Centres (PTCs), the International HPC Summer School, and PRACE Seasonal Schools, with a clear increase of participants registered (Figure 6).
Six PTCs were initially established, and these are located at:
- Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (Spain)
- CINECA – Consortio Interuniversitario (Italy)
- CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd. (Finland)
- EPCC at the University of Edinburgh (UK)
- Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (Germany)
- Maison de la Simulation (France)
After the rapid increase between 2010 and 2012, a plateau was evident between 2012 and 2017. This indicated that the maximum capacity of PRACE training offerings had been reached. Four new PRACE Training Centres were opened in 2017.
The new training centres are located at:
- IT4Innovations (Czech Republic)
- GRNET (Greece)
- ICHEC (Ireland)
- SURF (The Netherlands)
This second layer of training and education facilities has led to a further increase in training attendees since 2018.
PTC training events, Seasonal Schools and the International HPC Summer School are offered free of charge to eligible participants.
Between August 2008 and December 2021, PRACE provided over 70 000 participant-days of training through attendance-based (in-person and remote) courses, with an upward attendance trend. PRACE courses were attended by close to 23 000 individuals from all over Europe and beyond. It demonstrates that PRACE courses have a significant reach and impact on many European researchers and HPC users.
In 2021 the number of participants attending PTCs courses was 4 470 (535 with a non-academic affiliation). 88% of participants attending PTCs training days have an academic affiliation, illustrating the impact of such events on research and scientific communities, in particular for early-stage researchers and PhD students.
A clear difference in attendance is observed throughout the year 2021. As shown in Figure 7, the total number of attendances registered in the first two quarters (Q1 and Q2) was higher than during the third quarter (Q3), when registration dropped significantly (which coincides with the summer holiday period), then increased again in the fourth quarter (Q4). This indicates that the bulk of the training offered occurs mainly in the first semester of the year.
PRACE’s Impacting on Attracting the Industrial Sector
Non-academic use of PRACE HPC resources
PRACE opened its calls for proposals to non-academic applications in mid-2012. This can take the form of a project led by a principal investigator coming from a private company, or a researcher from industry collaborating in an academia-led project. The number of applications with non-academic participation can be seen in figure 8.
Up to Call 18, applications with a non-academic PI competed for PRACE resources with applications with an academic PI. This was changed in Call 19 with the introduction of an “Industry Access Pilot” that offered principal investigators from industry the possibility to apply for single-year access to a special industry track which prioritised 10% of the total resources available. The positive effect of this measure is apparent in the Calls 19 to 21, which showed an increase in non-academic use of PRACE HPC resources.
Since the SHAPE programme started in 2013, PRACE has received 123 applications, of which 79 have been awarded both PRACE HPC resources and, more importantly, support and know-how in the PRACE centres.
Between August 2008 and December 2021, PRACE provided over 70 000 participant-days of training through attendance-based (in-person and remote) courses, with an upward attendance trend. PRACE courses were attended by close to 23 000 individuals from all over Europe and beyond. It demonstrates that PRACE courses have a significant reach and impact on many European researchers and HPC users.
In 2021 the number of participants attending PTCs courses was 4 470 (535 with a non-academic affiliation). 88% of participants attending PTCs training days have an academic affiliation, illustrating the impact of such events on research and scientific communities, in particular for early-stage researchers and PhD students.
A clear difference in attendance is observed throughout the year 2021. As shown in Figure 7, the total number of attendances registered in the first two quarters (Q1 and Q2) was higher than during the third quarter (Q3), when registration dropped significantly (which coincides with the summer holiday period), then increased again in the fourth quarter (Q4). This indicates that the bulk of the training offered occurs mainly in the first semester of the year.
Fight against the COVID-19 pandemic – Fast Track
PRACE, has allocated more than half a billion core hours to computer simulations to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alongside experiments, these simulations are a pillar of research to assess the risks of different scenarios and investigate mitigation strategies.
A new PRACE Fast Track was opened end of March 2020 and closed end of March 2021.
PRACE received 90 proposals from 22 different countries. The top six were:
- Italy (26)
- Spain (19)
- France (8)
- Germany (6)
- United Kingdom (4)
- Switzerland, and Bulgaria (3)
33 of these proposals were awarded. They addressed Biomolecular Research, Docking/Screening, Fluid Dynamics, Transmission, and Epidemiology.
More details can be found in an article on the Fast Track which was published in PNAS. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024891118
