DEISA, the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications, and PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe organise a third major European event in High Performance Computing (HPC): the DEISA PRACE Symposium 2011. This symposium will take place from April 13 to 14 in Helsinki, Finland. It is hosted by CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland at the National Museum of Finland.

This unique symposium on Advancements in Petaflop Computing covers both European and international developments. The event addresses major interests of a broad audience: computational scientists, HPC technology experts, government representatives, vendors, and industry partners.
Registration for the DEISA PRACE Symposium is open at the DEISA and the PRACE websites, participation is free of charge.

Keynote speakers across the world will outline the strategic perspectives of High Performance Computing. During the first day they include Thom Dunning, UIUC, Director of NCSA, Kostas Glinos, Head of Unit, DG INFSO, European Commission, Anita Lehikoinen, Director of the Division for Higher Education and Science, Finnish Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, Xuebin Chi, Chinese Academy of Science, China, David Keyes, KAUST, Saudi Arabia & Columbia University, US and Mitsuo Yokokawa, Next-Generation Supercomputer R&D Center, Riken, Japan.

The second day focuses on challenges in computational science. In three Extreme Computing sessions, challenging computational science projects from all over Europe will be presented, covering essential scientific areas.

The 1st PRACE User Forum is also included in the programme of the symposium. The 1st PRACE User Forum will mark the start up of a forum where the PRACE users can discuss their experiences and expectations from the PRACE HPC services and resources.

Speakers from PRACE and DEISA will provide updates on the projects including Tier-0 system access, HPC architectures and projects’ current status and future plans.