PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing, was established in May 2010 as a permanent pan-European High Performance Computing service providing world-class systems for world-class science. Six systems at the highest performance level (Tier-0) are deployed by Germany, France, Italy and Spain providing researchers with over 9 billion core hours of compute time. HPC experts from twenty-five member states - funded in part in three implementation projects - enabled users from academia and industry to ascertain leadership and remain competitive in the Global Race. Currently PRACE is preparing for PRACE 2.0, the successor of the initial five year period. The objectives of PRACE-4IP are to build on and seamlessly continue the successes of PRACE and start new innovative and collaborative activities proposed by the consortium. These include: assisting the transition to PRACE 2.0; strengthening the internationally recognised PRACE brand; continuing advanced training which so far provided more than 15.000 person-training days to over 4700 persons, preparing strategies and best practices towards exascale computing, coordinating and enhancing the operation of the multi-tier HPC systems and services, and supporting users to exploit massively parallel systems and novel architectures. The proven project structure will be used to achieve each of the objectives in six dedicated work packages. The project will continue to be managed by Jülich. The activities are designed to increase Europe's research and innovation potential especially through: seamless and efficient Tier-0 services and a pan-European HPC ecosystem including national capabilities; promoting take-up by industry and special offers to SMEs; analysing new flexible business models for PRACE 2.0; proposing strategies for deployment of leadership systems; collaborating with the ETP4HPC, the coming CoEs and other European and international organisations on future architectures, training, application support and policies.

The project EXDCI-2 builds upon the success of EXDCI and will continue the coordination of the HPC ecosystem with important enhancements to better address the convergence of big data, cloud and HPC. EXDCI-2 strategic objectives are a) Development and advocacy of a competitive European HPC Exascale Strategy and b) Coordination of the stakeholder community for European HPC at the Exascale. EXDCI-2 mobilizes the European HPC stakeholders through the joint action of PRACE and ETP4HPC. It will promote global community structuring and synchronization in HPC, Big Data, Cloud and embedded computing, for a more competitive related value chain in Europe. It will develop a HPC technology roadmap addressing the convergence with HPDA and the emergence of new HPC uses. It will deliver application and applied mathematics roadmaps that will pave the road towards exascale simulation in academic and industrial domains. It will develop a shared vision for the future of HPC that increases the synergies and prepares for targeted research collaborations. EXDCI-2 will work to increase the impact of the H2020 HPC research projects, by identifying synergies and supporting market acceptance of the results. At the international level, EXDCI-2 will contribute to the international visibility of Europe, develop contacts with the world leading HPC ecosystems and increase European impact on HPC standards. EXDCI-2 will improve the HPC awareness by developing international event such as the European HPC Summit and by targeting specific audience through dedicated media. It will disseminate the achievements of the European HPC ecosystem.

The EOSCpilot project will support the first phase in the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as described in the EC Communication on European Cloud Initiatives [2016]. • It will establish the governance framework for the EOSC and contribute to the development of European open science policy and best practice; • It will develop a number of pilots that integrate services and infrastructures to demonstrate interoperability in a number of scientific domains; and • It will engage with a broad range of stakeholders, crossing borders and communities, to build the trust and skills required for adoption of an open approach to scientific research . These actions will build on and leverage already available resources and capabilities from research infrastructure and e-infrastructure organisations to maximise their use across the research community. The EOSCpilot project will address some of the key reasons why European research is not yet fully tapping into the potential of data. In particular, it will: • reduce fragmentation between data infrastructures by working across scientific and economic domains, countries and governance models, and • improve interoperability between data infrastructures by demonstrating how data and resources can be shared even when they are large and complex and in varied formats, In this way, the EOSC pilot project will improve the ability to reuse data resources and provide an important step towards building a dependable open-data research environment where data from publicly funded research is always open and there are clear incentives and rewards for the sharing of data and resources.

New architectures for Exascale and post-Exascale computers will have massively parallel and heterogeneous processing capabilities that will require the complete redesign and reimplementation of the used algorithms to fully exploit the possibilities of these supercomputers. The objective of the Inno4scale project is to promote the efficient use of European HPC systems by identifying and funding the most promising novel algorithms for applications. Through this action, the project will facilitate the design and development of highly efficient application software for European Exascale computers, the most successful of which should later be taken up by science and industry, resulting in important performance gains. The project will design and implement a call for proposals based on the cascade funding mechanism, financing the most promising ideas on novel algorithms for applications to fully exploit and benefit from these valuable European Exascale resources. Proposals received will be evaluated by external experts based on their potential innovation and impact on the upcoming Exascale era, and the CASTIEL/EuroCC2 and PRACE networks will be used to ensure the widest possible reach of the call. The Inno4scale consortium, made up of two major European HPC research centres and two experienced partners in managing HPC-related programmes, is in the ideal position to carry out the project in an effective and efficient manner. The results of the selected innovation studies that will receive more than 4 million euros in total, include the development and publication of the novel algorithms to reduce the time-to-solution or energy-to-solution of existing computing problems, as well as to provide novel approaches for large-scale projects. In this way, the Inno4scale project will contribute to the realisation of the EuroHPC JU overall objectives and those specific for this call, as well as enable an optimal exploitation of European Exascale and Post-Exascale HPC systems.

EInfraCentral's mission is to ensure that by 2020 a broader/ more varied set of users (including industry) benefits from European infrastructures. A common approach to defining and monitoring e-infrastructures services will increase their uptake. It will also enhance understanding of where improvement can be made in delivering services. The challenge is to shift towards an e-Infrastructure ''market place'' to initiate new service offerings and to engage with a broader set of users and needs. This will be achieved through an exchange of know-how between e-infrastructures consultations with a broad range of existing or potential users. EInfraCentral will pursue 3 specific objectives: 1. Structure an open and guided discussion between e-infrastructures to consensually define a common service catalogue 2. Develop a one-stop shop portal for users to browse the service catalogue and enhance the monitoring of key performance indicators that focus on availability and quality of services and user satisfaction 3. Draw policy lessons for a future European e-infrastructure market place as an extension of the common service catalogue and portal (incorporating a larger number of e-infrastructures). Key highlights of the proposal are: 1.A multidisciplinary team combining technical knowledge & insights from the e-infrastructure community with independent expertise in community building consultation, policy and data mapping and monitoring 2. A co-design process that will involve funders, the e-research infrastructure community and a representative user group (incl. SMEs) 3. On-going user interaction will guide the design and development of the eInfraCentral portal (as the main entry point to European e-infrastructures services) in two phases: a prototype with a first set of services and a full release with a KPI dashboard 4. Reinforce collaboration between e-infrastructures and optimise access to and increase uptake of e-infrastructures services by end users.