Lessons learned from urgent computing in Europe: Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic

Núria López (1, 2) , Luigi del Debbio (3, 2) , Marc Baaden (4, 2) , Matej Praprotnik (2) , Laura Grigori (5, 2) , Catarina Simões (2) , Serge Bogaerts (2) , Florian Berberich (2, 6) , Thomas Lippert (2, 6) , Janne Ignatius (2) , Philippe Lavocat (2) , Oriol Pineda (2) , Maria Grazia Giuffreda (2) , Sergi Girona (2) , Dieter Kranzlmüller (2) , Michael M Resch (2) , Gabriella Scipione (2) , Thomas Schulthess (2)

1 ICIQ - Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia
2 PRACE - Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe
3 Edin. - University of Edinburgh
4 LBT (UPR_9080) - Laboratoire de biochimie théorique [Paris]
5 ALPINES - Algorithms and parallel tools for integrated numerical simulations
6 JSC - Jülich Supercomputing Centre

PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), an international not-for-profit association that brings together the five largest European supercomputing centers and involves 26 European countries, has allocated more than half a billion core hours to computer simulations to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside experiments, these simulations are a pillar of research to assess the risks of different scenarios and investigate mitigation strategies. While the world deals with the subsequent waves of the pandemic, we present a reflection on the use of urgent supercomputing for global societal challenges and crisis management.

Mots clés: Urgent computing; COVID-19 pandemic; High-performance computing; Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe; PRACE COVID-19 fast track

Domaines: Informatique [cs]

Núria López, Luigi del Debbio, Marc Baaden, Matej Praprotnik, Laura Grigori, et al.. Lessons learned from urgent computing in Europe: Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021, 118 (46), pp.e2024891118. ⟨10.1073/pnas.2024891118⟩. ⟨hal-03438495⟩