The John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC): A survey of its supercomputer facilities and its Europe-wide computational science activities

The John von Neumann Institute for Computing (NIC) at the Research Centre Jülich, Germany, is one of the leading supercomputing centres in Europe. Founded as a national centre in the mid-eighties it now provides more and more resources to European scientists. This happens within EU-funded projects (I3HP, DEISA) or Europe-wide scientific collaborations. Beyond these activities NIC started an initiative towards the new EU member states in summer 2004. Outstanding research groups are offered to exploit the supercomputers at NIC to accelerate their investigations on leading-edge technology.The article gives an overview of the organisational structure of NIC, its current supercomputer systems, and its user support. Transnational Access (TA) within I3HP is described as well as access by the initiative for new EU member states. The volume of these offers and the procedure of how to apply for supercomputer resources is introduced in detail.