PROSPECT e.V. -
Promotion of Supercomputing Partnerships for European Competitiveness and Technology
The idea of a consortium for the "Promotion of Supercomputing Partnerships for European Competitiveness and Technology" - in short "PROSPECT" - started with a Memorandum of Understanding signed by 12 European Parties involved in High Performance Computing at October, 24th 2007. The initial members were European Supercomputing Centers - namely the Jülich Research Center, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the Leibniz Supercomputing Center -, a few university chairs, and several companies offering hardware or software for High Performance Computing.
The purpose of the consortium, as stated in the Memorandum of Understanding, has been the following:
- Under the PROSPECT umbrella the Parties intend to create projects concerning the main objective to develop hardware and application and system software components as well as related operating and programming concepts for Peta- and multi-Petaflop systems as a contribution to the PRACE-project.
- PROSPECT will support the parties in the communication with the PRACE-consortium.
- The intended projects and their legal basis have to be defined within the respective members at a later time and are not subject to the PROSPECT regulations but are expected to foster the PROSPECT objectives.
- The details of these joint projects in particular but not limited to the precise topic, work program of each Party, starting date and duration, intellectual property rights ownership and licensing and possible financing will be subject to future agreement(s) by the Parties.
After working together for one year the next milestone was the foundation of "PROSPECT e.V." (e.V. is German for "registered association"). The Prospect association has been founded on December, 15th 2008 in Garching, Germany. The purpose of the association is the furtherance of science and research in the field of supercomputing and technologies associated therewith. The association will realize its purpose in particular by holding scientific presentations and supporting research projects. Its aim is to foster the creation of a European Technology Platform (ETP) for HPC.
The association's organs are the General Meeting - a meeting of all Prospect members at least once a year - the Executive Committee, and the Auditors.
Articles of Association
Vereinssatzung (in German)
Memorandum of Understanding