An initial version of the Fenix infrastructure was realised through the ICEI project, which was funded by the European Commission. The distinguishing characteristic of this e-infrastructure is that data repositories and scalable supercomputing systems are in close proximity and well integrated. The European Human Brain Project (HBP) was the initial prime user of this research infrastructure, taking care of developing the community-specific services on top of the Fenix infrastructure services.
The objectives of ICEI can be summarized as follows:
- To perform a coordinated procurement of equipment and related maintenance services, licences for software components, and R&D services for realizing elements of the Fenix e-infrastructure;
- Design a generic e-infrastructure for the HBP, driven by its scientific use-cases and usable by other scientific communities;
- Build the e-infrastructure having the following key characteristics
- Interactive Computing Services;
- Elastic access to scalable compute resources; and
- Federated data infrastructure;
- Establish a suitable e-infrastructure governance;
- Develop a resource allocation mechanism to provide resources to HBP users and European researchers at large; and
- Assist in the expansion of the e-infrastructure to other communities that provide additional resources.
