PRACE completes phase I of Pre-Commercial Procurement

First Phase of Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) on Whole-System Design for Energy Efficient HPC was completed on 9 March 2015. During Phase I the companies Bull, E4, Maxeler and Megware explored the various possible solutions. All of them have now been invited to bid for Phase II during which prototypes for the three most promising solutions will be built. This new phase is expected to start in May 2015.

This PCP, the first one in the field of HPC in Europe, is a multi-country and multi-partner joint effort, implemented by a consortium composed of several partners of PRACE (CINECA (Italy) as Procuring Entity with CSC (Finland), EPCC (UK), JSC (Germany) and GENCI (France)). PRACE aisbl is involved as an advisory body in this Pre-Commercial Procurement pilot executed in the context of PRACE’s 3rd Implementation Project (PRACE-3IP) supported by the European Commission.

About PRACE:
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international non-profit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure provides a persistent world-class high performance computing service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry in Europe. The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 4 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). The Implementation Phase of PRACE receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013).