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Project

E-FISCAL

Title Financial Study for Sustainable Computing E-Infrastructures
Grant Agreement Number 283449
Funding Programmes FP7
Dates 31/07/2011 - 31/01/2013
Project URL http://efiscal.eu
Scientific Domain e-Infrastructures
Activity Coordination actions, conferences and studies supporting policy development, including international cooperation, for e-infrastructures
Action Line ICT-based e-Infrastructures
Transnational Access Yes
Type Of Project CSA
Abstract Over the last ten years the European countries and the EC have made significant investments in e-Infrastructures for scientific computing, notably High Throughput Computing (HTC) and High Performance Computing (HPC) services. Their contribution in pushing the European research towards a leading position in addressing global challenges has been validated by a growing number of research initiatives, most notably the ESFRI projects. Sustainability of such services is crucial, as the research supported by them is more and more crucial for European competitiveness and sustainability can be planned better if the costs are known. The emerging commercial offerings (Cloud-based HTC and HPC solutions) pose additional challenges and opportunities for sustainability. They represent new ways of explicit monetisation of computing and open the way to new business models (e.g. service fees or of lease industrial resources). The upcoming next framework programme and broader EU policies depend on more careful impact assessment, which requires accurate cost estimates. Similarly energy saving and green computing will be increasingly relevant, and project results will also allow estimating potential benefits in these areas. It is thus vital to understand the cost of the dedicated computing related e-Infrastructures, as expressed by EGI and PRACE initiatives. The calculation of such costs is not trivial; keeping detailed accounting data for the evolving mix of capital (hardware) and operational (personnel, energy) expenditures is only one of the challenges. The scope of the e-FISCAL proposal is to analyse such costs, facilitated by national entities (NGIs and HPC centres), compare them with equivalent commercial leased or on-demand offerings and provide an evaluation report. The execution of the survey builds on a small-scale survey conducted by the e-IRGSP2 project that proved the complexity of the issue and provided tacit knowledge valuable for the e-FISCAL project.
Coordinator
(Organisation name and Country) 		ATHENS UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS, Greece
Partners
(Organisation name and Country) 		NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, GALWAY, Ireland
EMERGENCE TECH LIMITED, United Kingdom
TA Call Financial Study for Sustainable Computing E-Infrastructures
Related Documents The costs of the HTC/HPC e-Infrastructures