Interactive Computing E-Infrastructure for the Human Brain Project - ICEI

Programme: H2020-EU.1.4. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Research Infrastructures

Topic: SGA-INFRA-FETFLAG-HBP - Interactive Computing e-infrastructure for the Human Brain Project FET Flagship (FPA)

Call for proposal: H2020-SGA-INFRA-FETFLAG-HBP

Funding Scheme: SGA-RIA - SGA-RIA

Grant agreement ID: 800858

Project description:

Supercomputing services designed for human brain project
 
Neuroscientists are set to benefit from a new consortium formed by five of the most significant supercomputing centres in Europe (Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy and France). Together, they formed the High Performance Analytics and Computing (HPAC) Platform of the Human Brain Project (HBP). The EU-funded ICEI project will set up cloud-like services compatible with the work cultures of scientific computing and data science. This will offer scientists a new quality of supercomputing that is both highly interactive and capable of extreme calculations. This elastic and scalable system will be adapted for neuroscientific research.

Objective:
Five leading European supercomputing centres are committed to develop, within their respective national programs and service portfolios, a set of services that will be federated across a consortium. The work will be undertaken by the following supercomputing centres, which form the High Performance Analytics and Computing (HPAC) Platform of the Human Brain Project (HBP):
▪ Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) in Spain,
▪ The Italian supercomputing centre CINECA,
▪ The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS,
▪ The Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, and
▪ Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA), France (joining in April 2018). The new consortium will be called Fenix and it aims at providing scalable compute and data services in a federated manner. The neuroscience community is of particular interest in this context and the HBP represents a prioritised driver for the Fenix infrastructure design and implementation. The Interactive Computing E-Infrastructure for the HBP (ICEI) project will realise key elements of this Fenix infrastructure that are targeted to meet the needs of the neuroscience community. The participating sites plan for cloud-like services that are compatible with the work cultures of scientific computing and data science. Specifically, this entails developing interactive supercomputing capabilities on the available extreme computing and data systems. Key features of the ICEI infrastructure are:
▪ Scalable compute resources;
▪ A federated data infrastructure; and
▪ Interactive Compute Services providing access to the federated data infrastructure as well as elastic access to the scalable compute resources.
The ICEI e-infrastructure will be realised through a coordinated procurement of equipment and R&D services. Furthermore, significant additional parts of the infrastructure and R&D services will be realised within the ICEI project through in-kind contributions from the participating supercomputing centres.