Despite not being the tech supercenters that America and several Asian countries are, two of the top five supercomputers in the world are in European counties.

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, or PRACE, is a non-profit association largely responsible for this, gathering experts around Europe to provide resources for European research communities.

“Europe needs to keep pace with the rest of the world, and simulation science is a key technology for the society, and we saw this very recently with COVID,” said Florian Berberich (pictured), operations director at PRACE. “We were able to help the research communities to find very quickly vaccines and to understand how the virus spread around the world, and all this knowledge is important to serve society. With these new systems, we will be able to predict more precise changes in the future.”

Berberich spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Paul Gillin and David Nicholson at SC22, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed what PRACE brings to supercomputing, what scientific applications it provides, and how companies can get involved. (* Disclosure below.)

The next generation of scientific research

Before PRACE stepped into the supercomputing game, research and data centers were operating on high-performance computer systems but they were isolated from each other without any sort of communication between the systems, according to Berberich.

“PRACE created a community of these operation sites, and it facilitated the exchange between them and also enabled to align investments and to get the most out of the available funding,” he said. “With this joint action and opening the resources for other research groups from other countries, you we were able to get access to the latest technology for different communities at any given time.”

PRACE runs an application that covers all different scientific domains, including industrial lead projects with more application-oriented targets, such as ones designed for aerodynamics research. All companies interested in becoming involved are free to submit their proposals.

“They will be evaluated and if they qualify, they will get access, and they can do their jobs and simulations,” Berberich explained.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the SC22 event:

(* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for SC22. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the main sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE