NETWORKING SERVICES

Today, each European country hosts a National Research and Education Network NREN 
https://about.geant.org/nrens/ (NREN), connecting research and higher education institutions with high-performance networks, and offering a range of related services.

In terms of organisation and funding, European NRENs are diverse. Some receive direct government funding; others are funded by their connected institutions. Some are part of large organisations managing a variety of national e-infrastructures, while others are smaller organisations focusing solely on the network. Nevertheless, they have important similarities. All NRENs offer high-performance networks suited to research and education needs; they have the headroom required for the bursts in traffic and the capability to serve research collaborations like ESFRI’s with specialised network support.

Additionally, all European NRENs offer critical access and identity services such as eduroam Eduroam 
https://eduroam.org/ and eduGAIN EduGAIN 
https://edugain.org/. These trust and identity services make up the foundation of services that allow secure access to research data, authentication to shared resources, and support for mobility and collaboration. Many NRENs also offer storage services, computing services, and a range of security services.

Together, NRENs have formed the GÉANT Association, an organisation for European collaboration in research networks and the operator of the pan-European GÉANT network, with connectivity to other world regions. With support from the EC during decades of Framework Partnerships, the GÉANT network has been developed into a world-leading network, ensuring world-class connectivity to all European countries and making Europe a leading actor in global research networking and e-infrastructures.

Through its integrated catalogue of connectivity, collaboration and identity services, GÉANT provides users with highly reliable, unconstrained access to computing, analysis, storage, applications and other resources, ensuring Europe’s forefront position in research.

GÉANT interconnects 39 NREN partners, and is the largest and most advanced Research & Education (R&E) network in the world. Over 50 million users at more than 10,000 institutions across Europe are connected by GÉANT, across all scientific disciplines.

More than just an Infrastructure for e-Science, GÉANT stands as a positive example of European integration and collaboration. It develops and delivers advanced networks and associated e-infrastructure services. It supports open innovation, collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst its members, partners and the wider research and education networking community. GÉANT network also offers connectivity to other world regions through, for instance, AfricaConnect3 AfricaConnect3 
https://africaconnect3.net, CAREN CAREN 
https://www.caren.geant.org/, EUMEDConnect3 EUMEDConnect3 
https://eumedconnect3.net, EaPConnect EaPConnect 
https://eapconnect.eu, TANDEM TANDEM 
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/654206 and others. In addition to current connections, more fibre is being built and planned from Europe to, for example, Northern America and Asia and to Latin America.

DATA SERVICES

The European data infrastructure is being developed through the combination of different initiatives, such as EUDAT, EGI, and OpenAIRE OpenAIRE 
https://www.openaire.eu, as well as the various data spaces which are being established. In many of them, the borderline between data and computing has become less obvious and even obsolete: data is the essential driver for computing, and comprehending data without understanding computing becomes challenging.

EUDAT supports the sharing and preservation of data across borders and disciplines. European researchers and practitioners from any research discipline can safeguard, find, access, and process data in a trusted environment. EUDAT offers heterogeneous research data management services and storage resources, supporting multiple research communities as well as individuals, through a resilient and distributed network spanning across 15 European countries. Data is stored alongside some of Europe’s most powerful supercomputers.

EGI creates and delivers open solutions for science and RIs by federating digital capabilities, resources and expertise between communities and across national boundaries. Researchers from all disciplines have easy, integrated and open access to the advanced scientific computing capabilities, resources and expertise needed to collaborate and to carry out data/compute intensive science and innovation. Regarding the services, EGI delivers advanced computing and data services to support scientists, multinational projects and RIs. EGI services are provided by EGI’s federated cloud providers and data centres.

The services can be requested by anyone involved in academic research and businesses and they can be categorised in the following groups: computing, storage, data and training. EGI provides access to CPUs, disk and tape storage, hosted by the partners in EGI. In addition to data services, EGI is distributing computing capacity – although owned by various EGI partners – due to which EGI could also be categorised under the computing infrastructures.

OpenAIRE aims to promote and facilitate open access to research outputs, including publications, data, and software, across Europe and beyond. Established in 2008, it has evolved into a significant player in the global Open Science movement. It provides a range of services and tools for researchers, institutions, and funders to help them comply with open access mandates and policies. Services include a repository of open access publications, data management and sharing tools, a directory of open access journals, and a helpdesk for support and guidance on open access issues.
In addition to these services, OpenAIRE also supports the development of Open Science policies and practices at the national and European levels through advocacy and engagement with stakeholders, including policymakers, funders, and research communities. The project has been instrumental in shaping the European open access landscape and promoting the benefits of Open Science for research and society as a whole.

Presently, EUDAT, EGI, and OpenAIRE collaborate as part of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative. Together, they contribute to its construction, design, and implementation.EOSC aims at providing a federated ecosystem for researchers across Europe, enabling them to collaborate and share data, tools and services in a trusted and secure environment. It is designed to promote and facilitate Open Science practices, making research more accessible, transparent and reproducible.

EOSC is currently being implemented through a series of projects. As an example, in INFRAEOSC 2021-2022 calls 15 projects were funded comprising a total of €87 million in funding for 221 separate participants. In INFRAEOSC 2023 call €69 million funding is planned for six different topics and €61 million in the 2024 call for five topics. The objective for the project portfolio is to develop digital infrastructures and related services for a wide range of research areas, many of them related with data.

COMPUTING SERVICES

Computing services are intended to offer several types of infrastructure, depending on applications. Alongside traditional CPU systems, the use of GPU processors is increasing, reflecting the expanding application portfolio. In High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications, much of the computing resources – CPU or GPU, or both – are dedicated to a single large task, often requiring a super-fast, low-latency communication between the different processors. Another approach is High-Throughput Computing (HTC) in which a big number of smaller tasks are carried out with less requirement for communication between nodes, but still targeting to complete the task set as fast as possible in wall-clock time. Typical examples requiring HPC can be found in climate models, computational chemistry or material sciences, to name a few. CERN distributed computing is probably the best-known case, with numerous systems working with Large Hadron Collider (LHC) data, distributing computing tasks to partner countries.

At the European level, there are two significant infrastructures supporting HPC: the EuroHPC JU (EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, JU) and the ESFRI Landmark PRACE. In addition to this, it is important to note that a vast amount of computational resources in Europe are located in and run by national centres and thematic RIs.

PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, is a non-for-profit organisation incorporated in Belgium (AISBL) since 2010. PRACE is the persistent organisation resulting from nearly 20 years of initiatives structuring High Performance Computing in Europe. Members, each representing one of the current 25 member countries, coordinated their efforts to provide an infrastructure to enable high-impact scientific research and innovation across all disciplines and industrial applications, thereby enhancing European scientific, technological and economic competitiveness for the benefit of society. PRACE chiefly distributed resources on the Tier-0 world-class supercomputers of its Hosting Members on the basis of a globally recognised and transparent peer-review process based on scientific excellence. PRACE distributed more than 32.5 billion core hours to 947 scientific projects. Mainly through its EU-funded PRACE-IP projects, it promoted excellence in computational science and engineering by developing knowhow and expertise across all Europe, e.g. via application support, technology watch, and training (25.000 persons were trained). IPR was developed through collaboration with the European HPC industry and innovation was promoted by supporting industrial HPC users, in particular SMEs (SHAPE SHAPE access 
https://prace-ri.eu/hpc-access/shape-access/ programme).

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking has acquired pre-exascale and petascale supercomputers (the EuroHPC supercomputers) which are located at and operated by supercomputing centres (Hosting Entities) in the European Union. The EuroHPC JU will manage these supercomputers’ access time, which should range from 35% up to 50% of their total capacity, depending on the EU funding ratio. Resources are allocated to European scientific, industrial and public sector users, matching their demanding application requirements, according to the principles stated in the EuroHPC JU Council Regulation and the JU’s Access Policy. All of the hosting entities offer these HPC resources, but also a wide variety of support for these computing services, such as technical support or code porting and optimization.

The three pre-exascale supercomputers have been located at the following supercomputing centres:

• LUMI LUMI 
  https://www.lumi-supercomputer.eu in CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland;
• LEONARDO LEONARDO 
  https://leonardo-supercomputer.cineca.eu in CINECA, Italy;
• Mare Nostrum 5 Mare Nostrum 5 
  https://www.bsc.es/ca/marenostrum/marenostrum-5 in Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, Spain.

LUMI has been operational since the beginning of 2022 and ranked first in Europe and third in the TOP500 TOP500 
https://www.top500.org list of world’s fastest supercomputers in 2022 and 2023. LUMI is coordinated by CSC (Finland), and includes a consortium of 11 countries (Finland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands), which have all invested in the system and receive computing cycles accordingly.

LEONARDO was inaugurated in late 2022 and is available for wider use since 2023. In November 2022 LEONARDO ranked fourth in TOP500, right after LUMI. LEONARDO is coordinated by CINECA (Italy), with participation from Austria, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Mare Nostrum 5 will be inaugurated during summer 2023 and will be in operation in autumn. Mare Nostrum 5 is coordinated by BSC (Spain) and includes Turkey and Portugal as participating countries.

Currently, alongside the three pre-exascale systems, five out of the ten accepted petascale systems are operational. These systems, located in Slovenia, Czech Republic, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Bulgaria, complement the European HPC Ecosystem and contribute to a wider geographical distribution of computing resources. 

This also has an impact for skills development, capacity building and integration of some European regions that previously had limited visibility within the European HPC landscape.

Computing resources in Europe can be obtained from all the EuroHPC centres, depending on the resource allocation policies and possible peer-review requirements. The share of the computing resources funded by EuroHPC JU will be available for all EuroHPC countries and beyond, depending on collaboration with an eligible country. In addition to the funding of hosting the systems, EuroHPC JU co-funds a number of projects targeted to support the work around the EuroHPC systems, similarly to EOSC. Currently, 39 projects from different areas – developing competencies, supporting research infrastructures or projects, and advancing technologies such as quantum – are being funded. The list of projects is available at https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/participate/our-projects_en

The ESFRI Landmark PRACE complements EuroHPC JU in the European HPC Ecosystem. PRACE currently has 25 members, representing European Union Member States and Associated Countries.

With the establishment of the EuroHPC JU, the access to leadership HPC systems for the European HPC user community is now provided by EuroHPC centres. To decrease the overlap, the PRACE Council (where all 25 Member states are represented) has agreed to transform PRACE into an Association of Users and HPC Centres in Europe. In April 2023 an overall agreement was reached on a new governance structure and member categories. The PRACE 3.0 will associate members from scientific and industrial ecosystems and European HPC centres.

Since the European HPC landscape has recently changed with EuroHPC and related investments, discussions about the role of PRACE are underway. PRACE has been a key player in European supercomputing since 2008, facilitating connections among research domains and centres through its implementation projects. Throughout 2023 and 2024, further deliberations did and will address the distribution of workloads between PRACE, EuroHPC JU, and other pertinent European initiatives. Additionally, discussions will focus on the specific services PRACE intends to offer the HPC community.

The services provided by PRACE are associated to two distinct categories: core services, funded via membership fees which target all PRACE members and European HPC stakeholders; and complementary services, financed through specific funding streams (service contracts, grants, or dedicated programmes) that contribute to the mission of PRACE while targeting specific actors involved in the corresponding projects or programmes.

OTHER SERVICES

In addition to HPC, data and network services, there is a need to focus on efficient use of these highly valuable (and costly) resources. Hence, various supplementary services are required in areas such as scalable application development, training and education, code porting and optimisation, and technical consultation, among others. These services are commonly provided by HPC centres, thematic centres, or collaboratively through EU projects.