Accessing the Zenobe's infrastructure

Context

The PRACE initiative – Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe – has setup a pan-european research infrastructure supporting scientific excellence providing HPC services and world-class supercomputers. Belgium is member of PRACE since October 2012. The PRACE infrastructure follows a Tier-approach in which techniques are developped and tested first at lower local levels before being scaled up and used for the resolution of scientific and technical challenges at the upper levels.

In Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Tier-2 computers are managed by the CÉCI – Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif – and Cenaero has been appointed in 2012 to the deployment and operation of the Tier-1 computer in Wallonia. The largest part of the resources available on this machine is dedicated to academic research, the other part being used for applied research or by industrial actors directly benefiting from high performance computing for their commercial activities.

Project categories

The supercomputer resources are allocated, in accordance with the applicable agreement established with the Walloon Region, to projects classified in 4 categories.

  • Academic research projects (CAT.1)

associated to upstream or fundamental research activities run by researchers in universities in the framework of projects like a PhD thesis, postdoctoral thesis, actions concertées de recherche, pôles d'attractivité, Marie-Curie grant, EIT which do not include HPC budget or access to supercomputers and cover only manpower funding.

These projects and the corresponding accesses are managed exclusively by the CÉCI.

The cost associated to the resources used by these projects is handled by the agreement PRACE Supercalculateur Tier-1 between the Walloon Region and Cenaero and does not require intervention of the actors of the given projets.

  • Applied research projets (CAT.2)

are defined as any other research project as European, regional or federal research projects (FP7, ERA-NET, Plan Marshall, etc) oriented towards applied research in collaboration with private companies.

These projects and the corresponding accesses are managed by the CÉCI for requests from groups in universities and by Cenaero for all other requests.

These projects contribute to the funding of the infrastructure operation costs at the level of 0.3 cEUR[1] by computing core-hour mobilized.

  • Projects of commercial intellectual services (CAT.3)

defined as contracts funded by private companies for which a high performance computing budget is foreseen.

These projects and the corresponding accesses are managed by the CÉCI for requests from groups in universities and by Cenaero for all other requests.

The use of the supercomputer resources in this framework is subject to the market price at a reference rate of 1.7 cEUR[1] by computing core-hour mobilized.

  • Direct use by private companies for commercial purposes (CAT.4)

these projects and the corresponding accesses are managed exclusively by Cenaero.

This use of the supercomputer resources is subject to the market price at a reference rate of 1.7 cEUR[1] by computing core-hour mobilized.

[1] Rates as approved on September 13th 2019 by the Tier-1 Users Committee and the Board of Directors of Cenaero.