Recently, the three national supercomputer centers in Germany (HLRS, LRZ, NIC) have joined forces and founded GCS, the “Gauss Centre for Supercomputing” (see autumn 2006 edition of inSiDE). Apart from giving the German supercomputing community a voice in the upcoming process of building a European HPC infrastructure, it is the declared goal of this alliance to “synchronize and optimize [the centers’] existing successful support structures within the GCS”, something that raises great expectations from the side of the scientific users.

It will be the latter point on which success or failure of this new construct will be judged.