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Danish research benefits extremely well from PRACE

For the past 10 years Denmark was awarded compute time through the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe corresponding to 30.000 years of calculations using a single laptop. Thereby creating otherwise unobtainable information for Danish researchers.
By
08/06/2021 12:06

Danish researchers have been able to use high performance supercomputing (HPC) for the past 10 years via the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe called PRACE. This has led to a lot of advanced research projects, that can now be explored in a comprehensive overview.

Actually, more than 1.000 million CPU hours have been awarded to Denmark, which means that Danish researchers have been able to use compute time on the European supercomputers and perform calculations that would otherwise have taken 30.000 years to calculate using a single laptop.

So far, a total of 36 projects done via PRACE have included the participation of researchers from Denmark. A total of 16 European HPC-facilities were accessed in 5 different countries in these projects, and of the 36 projects, 2 projects were in collaboration with industry and one project was in collaboration with an NGO.

Great diversity in Danish PRACE users

The research done via PRACE have been examined, and we now have a comprehensive overview of all the Danish projects that used the European Tier-0 HPC facilities for the past decade.

It shows a great diversity of Danish PRACE users. Seven scientific fields are represented, and four universities have utilized the European HPC-facilities.

"The PRACE membership has opened up for science that otherwise would not have been possible in Denmark," says Troels Haugbølle from KU, representing Universe Sciences, and who has done a lot of research through PRACE.

Also, Ole Sigmund from DTU and representing Engineering explains that they have been able to do research they would otherwise not have been able to do. 

"Access to PRACE supercomputing facilities has allowed us to solve giga-scale optimization problems that could not have been performed on Danish facilities," he says.

The research via PRACE have also made Denmark more competitive world-wide.

"The computing time at PRACE Tier-0 HPC facilities allowed our research group in Denmark to be competitive world-wide compared to other groups based in US, China or Japan," says Claudio Pica from SDU, representing the scientific field "Fundamental Constituents of Matter".

Danish project leads on most projects

It was found that 2/3 of the awarded 1.068.401.173 core-hours was given to projects with Danish project leads, whereas a 1/3 of the awarded core hours had foreign project leads. PRACE has helped to strengthen international collaborations, and it is mainly the Danish researchers who have led the projects awarded to Denmark in call numbers 1 to 22.

The allocation decisions from the PRACE call number 23 will be announced at the PRACE website at the end of September 2021.

The overview of the Danish participation in PRACE projects can be found here.

Facts about Denmark in PRACE
10 years of academia using Tier-0 (2011-2021)
Awarded >1.000 million CPU core hours
Participation in 36 projects
Accessed 16 HPC facilities in 5 countries
2 projects in collaboration with the industry
1 project in collaboration with an NGO

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