Infrastructures

Digital infrastructures for research are decline classically according to their perimeter:

Some of them are labelled Research Infrastructure (RI) or Very Large Research Infrastructure (VLIR) and appear on the national roadmap for Research Infrastructures.
For more information on the national strategy for research infrastructures (french).
With regard to High Performance Computing (HPC), we are talking about the computing pyramid:
GRICAD maintains important links with national infrastructures and can support you in their use.
From a technological point of view, there are strong interactions with Grid'5000 / SILECS, with advances in computer research in the field of intensive computing being particularly interesting and relevant to deploy on our production infrastructures.

Tier0 : european level

High Performance Computing

At the European level, it is the PRACE infrastructure (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) that allows researchers to use several machines with a power of several hundred petaflops/s.

Grid computing

There are two main infrastructures for grid computing and cloud computing:
  • EGI (European Grid Infrastructure). This infrastructure federates the National Grid initiatives.
  • WLCG (Worldwide LHC Computing Grid) which includes the national grids dedicated to the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

Tier1 : national level

High Performance Computing

GENCI (Grand Equipement National pour le Calcul Intensif) is a civil society (Ministry of Higher Education and Research, CEA, CNRS, CPU and INRIA) that supports the national strategy for intensive computing. As such, it finances national computers hosted and operated by the three national centres:
  • CINES (Centre Informatique National de l’Enseignement Supérieur)
  • IDRIS (Institut du Développement et des Ressources en Informatique Scientifique), computing center of CNRS
  • TGCC (Très Grand Centre de Calcul), computing center for CEA (open section).
GENCI represents France in the European PRACE initiative.

Access to these national infrastructures is by call twice a year through the procedure DARI (Demande d'Attribution de Ressources Informatiques).

Grid computing

Just as there are two grid and cloud computing infrastructures at European level, one generalist and the other dedicated to high-energy physics, there are two at national level:
  • France Grille, French representative in EGI
  • le CC IN2P3, which is the Computing Centre for research in particle physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics.

Computer Science Research Platform

The infrastructures presented above are production infrastructures, which are used by many disciplines in a stable hardware and software environment.
Computer research has different needs and requires reconfigurable infrastructures that integrate the most advanced hardware technologies.
It is based on a national infrastructure: Grid'5000 which will evolve in 2019 into a new infrastructure : SILECS.

Research Infrastructure for Human and Social Sciences

Huma-Num is a very large research infrastructure (VLRI) designed to facilitate the digital shift in research in the humanities and social sciences.
It provides a range of services for the storage, processing, exhibition, reporting, dissemination and long-term preservation of digital data from research in the humanities and social sciences.

Tier2 : regional level, mesocenters

Mesocentres are regional and local computing centres, they are most often associated with a university site.
GRICAD is the mesocenter of Grenoble site.
Their very close proximity to users allows them to be as close as possible to needs, and to respond to requests with more flexibility than national centres.
More information on mesocenters on the Computing Group website.

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