High Performance Analytics & Computing Platform – Guidebook

This website describes the results of the “High Performance Analytics and Computing” (HPAC) Platform of the Human Brain Project (HBP) from the first three project phases (Ramp-up Phase 10/2013-03/2016, SGA1 04/2016-03/2018 and SGA2 04/2018-03/2020).

Due to a major project-internal reorganisation, this website will no longer be updated after March 2020.

More recent information can be found on humanbrainproject.eu and ebrains.eu.
Information about the Fenix Research Infrastructure and the ICEI project, including resource access, are available on their website.

Follow EBRAINS Computing Services @HBPHighPerfComp and Fenix RI @Fenix_RI_eu on Twitter to learn about the most recent developments and to get to know about upcoming opportunities for calls and collaborations!

This website is the Guidebook of the Human Brain Project‘s High Performance Analytics & Computing (HPAC) Platform and serves as a collection of all user documentation for the software tools, libraries, frameworks and programming models available as part of the HPAC Platform.

The mission of the HPAC Platform is to build, integrate and operate the base infrastructure for the Human Brain Project, together with Fenix, a project that is about to start. The infrastructure comprises hardware and software components, which are required to run large-scale, data-intensive, interactive simulations, to manage large amounts of data and to implement and manage complex workflows comprising concurrent simulation, data analysis and visualisation workloads.

The HPC Platform currently provides tier-0 supercomputers at four European HPC centres for the HBP community. We are currently integrating also the systems of the TGCC of CEA.

JUWELS
Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC),
Forschungszentrum Jülich
JURECA at JUELICH JURECA
Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC),
Forschungszentrum Jülich
PizDaint at ETHZ-CSCS Piz Daint
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)
MareNostrum 4
Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC)
MARCONI
Cineca
Pico at CINECA Pico
Cineca
Irene (Joliot-Curie)
CEA

Also the pilot system JURON, developed in a Pre-Commercial Procurement by a consortium of IBM-NVIDIA, is currently part of the HPAC Platform:

JURON (IBM-NVIDIA)
(end of production: end of Nov. 2020)

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) provides the users of the HPC Platform with easy, secure and transparent access to Cloud-based storage. The cloud storage is accessible through an Amazon S3-compatible interface. Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH) and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) provide the HPC Platform users with high fidelity visualisation systems.

The aixCAVE, a five-sided virtual reality environment, is located at RWTH. Both EPFL and RWTH offer tiled display walls as additional high-resolution visualisation systems.