Content about Supercomputing

Announcement - DEISA digest now available

Image courtesy DEISA

The new digest for DEISA — the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications — was published on 10th of May 2010.
DEISA Digest 2010 presents articles about the key results of the research projects carried out using the DEISA research infrastructure during the recent years. It includes 15 popular science articles.
The DEISA Digest 2010 is available online as a pdf. 
Or if you prefer reading a printed version, order your free copy via email.

Video of the Week - Simulations show scenarios for oil spill

This animation shows one scenario of how oil released at the location of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may move in the upper 65 feet of the ocean. This is not a forecast, but rather, it illustrates a likely dispersal pathway of the oil for roughly four months following the spill. It assumes oil spilling continuously from April 20 to June 20. The colors represent a dilution factor ranging from red (most concentrated) to beige (most diluted). The dilution factor does not attempt to estimate the actual barrels of oil at any spot; rather, it depicts how much of the total oil from the source will be carried elsewhere by ocean currents. For example, areas showing a dilution factor of 0.01 would have one-hundredth the concentration of oil present at the spill site.
The animation is based on a computer model simulation, using a virtual dye, that assumes weather and current conditions similar to

Feature - Technology roundup: Science gateways and portals may level the playing field

Baseball diamond in a small town at night. Image courtesy Joe Y Jiang, Creative Commons

Our guest writer is Elizabeth Leake of TeraGrid — the high-performance, distributed computing network in the US. At the recent EGEE User Forum in Sweden, attendees had a chance to learn about two general-purpose portal engines and two domain-oriented portals. What these technologies have in common is the ability to act as “science gateways,” ultimately allowing new communities of researchers better access to advanced computing, thus leveling the playing field — a key part of “eScience.” Here is a round-up of some of the features pf these gateways, and who is developing them:VCR
Milan Prica from Sincrotrone Trieste, an independent laboratory in Italy, presented an advanced web portal with virtual collaboration features. The latest version of Virtual Control Room (VCR) inc

Announcement - e-IRG releases new Roadmap on e-Infrastructure

Image courtesy e-IRG

Since the publication of the previous e-IRG Roadmap in 2007, the e-Infrastructure field has undergone several fundamental changes. Networking, grid, data, high performance and commodity computing services are witnessing major organizational and technical changes. The ongoing expansion of the e Infrastructure user communities is also already producing new and updated requirements for the common e Infrastructure.
To help deal with this, the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group — an inter-governmental policy body comprising national delegates from more than 30 European countries — has released the e-IRG Roadmap for e-Infrastructures, (Publications/Roadmap).
Rather than looking at these changes independently, the Roadmap analyzes their impact from the points of view of users, service providers and the society as a whole. Ultimately, the document makes several recommendations aimed at max

Opinion: What would Linnaeus do?

Carl Linnaeus on his wedding day, holding in his right hand a specimen of Linnear borealis — his favorite plant, said Magnus Lidén, curator of the Uppsala University Botanic Garden. Image courtesy Uppsala University Art Collection

Elizabeth Leake of TeraGrid — the high-performance, distributed computing network in the USA — was a guest at the EGEE User Forum, the recent conference in Europe on high-throughput computing. Here, she gives her impressions about a technology challenge faced by both types of computing: Long-term, persistent storage.
 
One of the highlights of visiting the conference venue in Uppsala, Sweden, was learning about Carl Linnaeus.
Born in nearby Råshult in 1707, Linnaeus  moved to the college town of Uppsala to study, and quickly became a cornerstone of the university. He died in 1778 and was laid to rest in Uppsala Cathedral — largest in all of Scandinavia.
Linnaeus was fam

Announcement - Deadline extended for applications: SuperComputing Camp

The deadline for applications has been extended by one week, to Friday, May 7, for the 2010 Super Computing and Distributed Systems Camp, taking place 15-22 August in Catay, Santander, Colombia.
The eight day event will consist of six days of scientific sessions, one leisure day with an organized activity such as hiking or rafting, and one day for a parallel programming contest. Lectures and practical sessions will cover a variety of topics, including:

Parallel Programming
Multiprocessors Programming
Distributed Systems

Cluster Computing
Grid Computing
Cloud Computing
Volunteer Computing

Resource/Job Management & Scheduling
Virtualisation
Green Computing
Performance Evaluation

Applicants should have a good knowledge of written and spoken English, with a background in high performance computing and good programming skills. Masters students and undergraduates in their final year are prefe

Announcement - Call for proposals: Cycles on ALCF 10 petaflop Blue Gene system

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility is now accepting proposals for time allocations on its next-generation, 10 petaflop IBM Blue Gene system. Allocations through the Early Science Program (ESP) are for pre-production hours (between system installation and full production) beginning in early 2012. More than four billion core hours are available.
To ensure the success of these early projects, ESP awardees will receive significant support from the ALCF staff of computational scientists and performance engineers, plus additional assistance from program postdocs.
Proposals are due 29 April 2010, and must include a detailed plan for the science to be accomplished plus a description of the application development that would be done. For full details or to submit your proposal, visit the website.  Or, for more information about the Early Science Program, please email [email protected].

Opinion - CERN School of Computing, at “the Mecca of physics”

A 1585 woodcut showing Göttingen as seen from the west. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge. 

(Editor’s note: For decades, CERN has held an annual summer school of computing, with the latest one taking place in Göttingen, an historic German university town known as “the Mecca of physics” from about 1900 to 1935. Below, the school’s director describes what it was like to host this event at the same place where Enrico Fermi, Karl Gauss, Werner Heisenberg, Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang Pauli and Max Planck once taught.)
Never in the history of science has a single city attracted virtually all of the prestigious scientists in a major discipline at such a key moment in its evolution. Even those who did not work at the university, like Bohr, Einstein or Schrödinger, were frequent visitors to Göttingen to meet with their colleagues. To date, the University of