Dear HPC users, PRACE Preparatory Access is an established rolling Call for Proposals which supports researchers in Europe to port and adapt their applications to the PRACE Tier-0 infrastructure. The objective of PRACE Preparatory Access is to allow PRACE users to optimise, scale and test codes on PRACE systems, to prepare for Project Access. The new Preparatory Access (PA) Type D offers users to start the optimisation work on a PRACE Tier-1 national system to finally reach PRACE Tier-0 system scalability. The intermediate access to a Tier-1 national system, provided by PRACE partners, introduces a scaling level without having to face greater restrictions at the start of the optimisation work. It also helps to find the relevant bottlenecks which have to be solved to reach Tier-0 scalability. In addition to computing time on a Tier-1 and finally a Tier-0 system, applicants will receive support by PRACE HPC experts. The Preparatory Access Call is a rolling call, researchers can apply for access all year. There are no closing dates, proposals will be reviewed every third month. The first cut-off date for PA Type D is February 15th, 2017. In addition we also want to highlight the established PRACE Preparatory Access Type C scheme, which provides direct access to a Tier-0 system without an intermediate Tier-1 layer. The next cut-off date for PA Type C is March 1st, 2017. We invite all interested scientists, whose projects fit the criteria of the PRACE call to submit their projects. The criteria for the PRACE Calls as well as complete information on the PRACE machines, how to apply and on the PRACE peer review process can be found on the following website: http://www.prace-ri.eu/PRACE-Preparatory-Access Kind regards, Volker Weinberg -- Dr. Volker Weinberg Leibniz-Rechenzentrum der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften - High Performance Computing Group - email: weinberg@lrz.de address: Boltzmannstr. 1 - D-85748 Garching bei Muenchen room: E.1.016 phone: +49 (89) 35831-8863