Academic Supercomputing in Europe

France

Statistics

Population: 60.4 million
GDP/capita: €23,900

Policy

The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the universities determine the French national HPC policy for academic research. CNRS funds a national HPC centre (IDRIS, near Paris) and the Ministry of Universities a second national HPC centre (CINES, in Montpellier).
The national HPC policy is to support a hierarchical structure of resources. Users should find resources available at all levels of performance and should be granted access to them according to their needs. Resources are more and more centralised (and rare) as the level of performance increases.
A committee (Comité des Grands Equipements) advises the Minister of Science and Technology (MRT) on all questions of large installations.

Supercomputing facilities for the academia

CEA: Compaq AlphaServer ES40/318, Compaq AlphaServer ES40/166
CEA (Limeil): Cray T3E/188
CEA/CENG: Compaq Alphaserver ES40/232, Fujitsu VPP5000/16, Cray T3E/300
CEA/DAM: Bull cluster (8704 Itanium2/1600), Compaq AlphaServer SC2560, Bull cluster (256 Itanium2/1300), HP Alphaserver SC45/800, HP cluster (212 Opteron/2600), NEC SX-6/44
CECIC: Beowulf cluster (10 Xeon/2600 + 18 Xeon/2400)
Cemagref: Beowulf cluster (48 Xeon/2400)
CEMEF: Sun cluster (64 Opteron/1800), Sun cluster (64 Xeon/2800), Beowulf cluster (64 PIII/1000)
CERFACS: Cray XD1/140, Compaq AlphaServer SC24
CNES (at Toulouse): IBM pSeries 690/16
CINES: SGI Origin 3800/768, IBM pSeries 690/352, IBM SP Power3/472, Dell cluster (16 Xeon/3000), Beowulf cluster (44 Opteron/1800)
CNRS/IDRIS: IBM pSeries 690+/384, IBM pSeries 655/384, IBM pSeries 690/256, NEC SX-5/40
CRI: Sun Fire15K/64
CRIHAN: IBM pSeries 690/64, Beowulf cluster (10 Apple G5/2000), SGI Origin 2000/64
CRMCN: Beowulf cluster (28 P4/3200)
EDF (Clamart); Beowulf Cluster (32 Xeon/3060), Beowulf cluster (16 Opteron/1600), Beowulf cluster (20 Xeon/2200), Beowulf cluster (16 Xeon/2400), Beowulf cluster (64 Xeon/2600), Beowulf cluster (64 Xeon/2600)
ENSL: 2xSun 6800/32
EPP: Beowulf cluster (20 P4/2000 + 20 P4/3000)
EPEE: Beowulf cluster (36 Xeon + 12 Athlon)
IECB: Beowulf cluster (32 P4/2800)
IFP: IBM cluster (64 Xeon/3060), NEC SX-5/5, IBM pSeries (p655/16 + p690/8)
IFREMER: Compaq AlphaServer/36
IIM: Beowulf cluster (20 G4/450)
INRIA (Grenoble): HP cluster (225 PIII/733)
INRIA (Rhone-Alpes): HP cluster (208 Itanium2/900), Beowulf cluster (22 Xeon/2600)
INRIA (Sophia Antipolis): Beowulf cluster (280 Opteron/2000)
IN2P3: NEC cluster (640 Xeon/2800), IBM cluster (384 Xeon/2400), Sun cluster (68 Opteron/2300), IBM cluster (128 PIII/1400), IBM cluster (128 PIII/1000)
LPQ: Beowulf cluster (78 Opteron/2000)
Meteo France (Toulouse): Fujitsu VPP5000/64, VPP5000/60
ONERA: NEC SX-5/16
SHOM: IBM pSeries p655/64
UB (at Dijon): Beowulf cluster (56 Opteron/2000), AlphaCluster/56
UBP: IBM cluster (196 Xeon/3060)
ULP: HP cluster (60 Itanium2/1300), SGI Altix 350/12
University of Bordeaux: IBM pSeries 690/32, 2 HP 9000-712/64
University of Le Mans: Beowulf cluster (70 PIII/500)
University of Lille: IBM SP Power3/64, IBM pSeries 690/16
University of Lyon: Beowulf cluster (84 Athlon/1666)
University of Orleans: Beowulf cluster (78 Athlon/1000)
University of Paris-Sud: IBM pSeries 655/32, Beowulf cluster (432 Opteron/2000)
University of Nantes: HP AlphaServer/32
University of Rennes: Sun Fire 12K/40
University of Valenciennes: Cray SV1/12
UPMC: IBM pSeries 655/32

The figure above shows the peak performance of the #1 French system and the total performance of the French HPC systems during the past 5 years.

Acquisition and upgrade plans

National academic network

In 1991 ME, MRT and the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications decided to establish the national high-speed research network RENATER. A legal structure (Groupement Renater) associates the various research and education institutions involved in the program and acts as the legal operational unit in charge of the service.
RENATER has a distributed architecture.The backbone is 2.5 Gbps. Regional networks connect to the backbone at speeds of 622 Mbps and 2.5 Gbps.
RENATER has a 10 Gbps link to GÉANT.
The budget for 2004 is €24 million.

http://www.renater.fr

Allocation of resources

Access to the resources of both national centres is free after peer review. Once a year there is a joint nation-wide request for proposals to use the facilities at the centres. These proposals are examined by the appropriate Evaluation Committee (10 Committees, about 10 experts each). Resources are allocated by the Directors of Centres, following the recommendations of their Scientific Council.

National Grids

The e-Toile project (2001-2003) created a high performance data processing grid with computers of French academic and industrial research centres.

MRNT created in 2001 the ACI GRID programme to support the development of Grids in France. ACI GRID launched in 2003 two national grid programmes "GRID 5000" and "Data Grid Explorer".
The "GRID 5000" infrastructure is being deployed at 8 HPC centers in Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lille, Lyon, Orsay, Rennes, Sophia-Antipolis and Toulouse.

http://www.grid5000.org

The Data Grid Explorer will be an emulation environment consisting of a large cluster (>1000 processors, at IDRIS), a database of experimental conditions and tools to control and analyse experiments. The budget is €1 million. The first stage of the cluster (432 processors) was installed in October 2004 at IDRIS.

List of abbreviations

ACI Action Concertée Incitative
CEA Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique
CECIC Centre d'Expérimentation pour le Calcul Intensif en Chimie, Grenoble
CEMEF Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux, Sophia Antipolis
CENG Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Grenoble
CERFACS Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée en Calcul Scientifique, Toulouse
CINES Centre Informatique National de l'Enseignement Supérieur, Montpellier
CNES Centre National dÉtudes Spatiales
CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
CRI Centre de Ressources Infobiogen, Evry
CRIHAN Centre de Ressources Informatiques de Haute Normandie, Mont-Saint-Aignan
CRMCN Centre de Recherche en Matière Condensée et Nanosciences, Marseille,
DAM Direction des Applications Militaires, Bruyeres
EDF Electricité de France
ENSL Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon
EPP Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau
EPEE Fédération de Recherche EPEE (Energétique, Propulsion, Espace, Environnement), Orleans
IDRIS Institut du Développement et des Ressources en Informatique Scientifique, Orsay
IECB Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie, Bordeaux
IFP Institut Français de Pétrole, Rueil
IFREMER Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer, Brest
IIM International Institute of Multimedia
INRIA Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique
IN2P3 Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules
LPQ Laboratoire de Physique Quantique, Toulouse
ME Ministère de la Education
MESR Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche
MRNT Ministère délégué à la Recherche et aux Nouvelles Technologies
MRT Ministère de la Recherche et de la Technologie
ONERA Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales, Chatillon
RENATER Réseau National de Télécommunication pour la Technologie, l'Enseignement et la Recherche
RNTL Réseau National des Technologies Logicielles
SHOM Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine, Brest
UB Université de Bourgogne
UBP Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand
ULP Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg
UBP UPMC Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris

Contacts and Addresses

Prof. Victor Alessandrini
IDRIS
Boite Postal 167
F-91403 Orsay CEDEX CIIX
email: va@idris.fr

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