Researchers from Israel and Eastern Mediterranean Experience Four Days of Advanced HPC Training at the PRACE 2014 Winter School in Tel Aviv

Some 50researchers, post docs and graduatestudentsfromIsrael, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey attended the PRACE 2014 Winter School held on 10-13 February 2014 on the Tel Aviv University campus in Israel.

Participants received world-class hands-on training from Dr. Jussi Enkovaara, of the CSC-IT Center for Science in Finland, and Dr. Alan O’Cais from the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. Local experts in parallel programming and CUDA enriched the four-day hands-on sessions. Over 120 professionals and researchers attended the opening half-day workshop on “The Future of HPC: Israeli Innovation”, where Israeli developers working on future HPC technologies presented highlights of their work.

Since the Israel inter-University Computation Center (IUCC) joined the PRACE as Israel’s representative in 2012, a growing number of Israeli researchers have been allocated core hours on PRACE resources. The decision to join PRACE is part of IUCC’s commitment to keep pace with the needs of Israel’s scientific and research communities.

ThePRACE 2014 Winter School wasjointlysponsoredbythe LinkSCEEM project that advances the establishment of a high performance computing (HPC) eco-system in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The program and curriculum covered many exciting topics, including:

·         AccesstoLinkSCEEM and PRACE HPC infrastructures

·         Exascale Computing and operating Systems

·         MultiGPU infrastructure

·         Operating System Support for High-Throughput Processors

·         Parallel Programming – Message Passing Interface (MPI)

·         Hybrid (MPI + OpenMP) Programming

·         Usage of Maths and Scientific Libraries

·         Profiling

Inaddition to promoting knowledge, the training sessions encouraged and nourished a healthy exchange of ideas and opened new roads toward international collaborations by bringing together participants and presenters from different institutions and other countries. The tour of the old City of Jerusalem and dinner was a highlight enjoyed by the participants, creating new social and professional connections.

“IUCC was happy to host the participants to the Winter School, from both Israel and abroad. The social events contributed a great deal toward strengthening professional connections that we are confident will lead to future collaboration.We received very positive feedback on the program and ideas for additional content participants would like to see in the future, as the importance of supercomputing grows as a vital element in scientific progress,” saidProf. Shlomi Dolev, IUCC Chairman and PRACE Council member.

The PRACE 2014 Winter School is part of the ongoing Seasonal School programme. The upcoming PRACE 2014 Spring School will be held on 15 – 17 April 2014 in Austria. Additional informationabout thePRACE 2014 Winter School isavailableat: http://prace-ri.eu/PRACE-Winter-School-2014

About PRACE: The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international non- profit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure provides a persistent world-class high performance computing service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry in Europe. The computer systems and their operations accessible through PRACE are provided by 4 PRACE members (BSC representing Spain, CINECA representing Italy, GCS representing Germany and GENCI representing France). The Implementation Phase of PRACE receives funding from the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements RI-283493 and RI-312763. For more information, see www.prace-ri.eu

AboutIUCC: The Israel inter-University Computation Center(IUCC) implements, operates and maintains the National Research and Education Network (NREN) of Israel and manages and provides a wide range of computing, joint procurement and digital information services. IUCC currently serves Israel’s eight universities and thousands of students in regional and teachers’ colleges as well as researchers at numerous R&D organizations in Israel. For more information, see www.iucc.ac.il