hpc-ch forum on User-Centric View on HPC

Europe/Zurich
H8-01-D (Campus Biotech)

H8-01-D

Campus Biotech

H8 (auditorium) 01 (floor 1) Parking available next to the building (please contact raluca.hodoroaba@cscs.ch to secure a spot)
Arnaud Hungler (Health 2030 Genome Center), Ioannis Xenarios (Health 2030 Genome Center), Michele De Lorenzi (CSCS)
Description

Placing users at the centre of the design of HPC Infrastructure has been always a challenging effort. With the democratization of computational usage in different fields of biomedical science, rethinking and reshaping HPC is a necessity. Regardless of the context (large university supercomputer, small company cluster or anything in between), considering the usage before design or maintenance is even more critical. 
HPC resource mutualization is also an under-appreciated aspect from a user perspective. Balancing the needs and requirements for an efficient HPC infrastructure will be the central topic of this HPC-CH conference. 

  • How to understand your users' needs? 
  • What impact does the usage have on the design and maintenance? 
  • How to make different use cases co-hosted? (Single large parallel job versus many small jobs, or direct user versus automated software) 
  • How do you teach your users? / How do the users teach you? 
  • How to manage the compromise between usability and security  
Participants
  • Adam Henderson
  • Adrien ALBERT
  • Alexander Kashev
  • Alexandre Wetzel
  • Andrei Plamada
  • Antonio Russo
  • Arkadiy Shevrikuko
  • Arnaud Hungler
  • Bastian Bukatz
  • Ben Cumming
  • Carlo Antonio Pignedoli
  • Carlos Fenoy
  • Christian Bolliger
  • Christoph Witzig
  • Cristian RUIZ SANABRIA
  • Cédric Howald
  • Dries Verachtert
  • Edoardo Baldi
  • Elena TORRES
  • Emmanuel Jeanvoine
  • Filippo Stenico
  • Florent Ollinet
  • Gaël ROSSIGNOL
  • Geoffrey Fucile
  • Gilles Fourestey
  • Hardik Kothari
  • Henry Luetcke
  • Ilya Kolpakov
  • Ioannis Xenarios
  • Jani Heikkinen
  • Jean-Baptiste Aubort
  • Jean-Luc Falcone
  • Johann FLEURY
  • Julia Gustavsen
  • Julien Ollivier
  • Loick Pipolo
  • Lorenzo Cerutti
  • Luca Cervigni
  • Maria Grazia Giuffreda
  • Mei-Chih Chang
  • Michele De Lorenzi
  • Nadejda Marounina
  • Nick Holway
  • Nina Loktionova
  • Oksana Riba Grognuz
  • Olli Salo
  • Pablo Fernandez
  • Pablo Llopis
  • Pierre Berthier
  • Pierre-Yves Burgi
  • Prashanth Kanduri
  • Raed Arous
  • Raluca Hodoroaba
  • Ramona Caulea
  • Ricardo Silva
  • Roberto Fabbretti
  • Roman Briskine
  • Samuel Fux
  • Shubham Kapoor
  • Sofiane Sarni
  • Stefan Weber
  • Sudershan Lakshmanan
  • Sébastien Moretti
  • Thomas Jakobsche
  • TIm Robinson
  • Victor Holanda Rusu
  • Yann Sagon
    • 8:45 AM 9:30 AM
      Registration (Campus Reception Desk) 45m
    • 9:00 AM 9:30 AM
      Welcome Coffee (H8 foyer) 30m
    • 9:30 AM 10:00 AM
      Campus Biotech Visit (meeting point: H8 foyer) 30m
    • 10:00 AM 10:15 AM
      Welcome and Introduction 15m
      Speakers: Arnaud Hungler (Health 2030 Genome Center), Ioannis Xenarios (Health 2030 Genome Center), Keith Harshman (Health 2030 Genome Center), Michele De Lorenzi (CSCS)
    • 10:15 AM 10:45 AM
      Genomics and HPC: Use Cases and Challenges 30m

      The talk will introduce the data analysis and data management needs at the core of the Health 2030 Genome Center and how we operate an internal HPC cluster and the custom software to address these needs.

      Speakers: Arnaud Hungler (Health 2030 Genome Center), Ilya Kolpakov (Health 2030 Genome Center)
    • 10:45 AM 11:15 AM
      How to Nurture the ORD Superheroes? 30m

      In her talk, Oksana will explore what user-centricity means in the context of the Open Research Data (ORD) challenges. The inherent complexity of ORD tasks frequently leads to solutions that are hard to use. Likewise, the inevitable tradeoffs when designing systems for complicated tasks hinder usability. Oksana will exemplify how her team engages with users to co-create solutions that inspire and nudge ORD best practices. She will reveal favored approaches for building user-centered flows to create user experiences that nurture ORD superheroes.

      Speaker: Oksana Riba Grognuz (SDSC)
    • 11:15 AM 11:45 AM
      Real-Time Workflow and Application with High Performance by Cloud Security Enabled HPC for On-Demand Activity Calculations for HIPA 30m

      Scientific computing including accelerators, detectors and experiment automation requires large computer resources, therefore running these simulations on HPC is leading to rapid growth.

      Nowadays, academic research projects and industrial platform solutions proposed infrastructures allow remote high-performance capacity for simulations and data analysis in security. However, these on-demand cloud services explore cloud security leakage and performance degradation issues.

      The Vis-aS project proposes an efficient workflow, cloud security enabled HPC and data storage to provide the high-performance and security-enabled environment for the Vis-aS project, which has a web application used for activity calculations for the high-intensity proton accelerator (HIPA) at Paul Scherrer Institute ( PSI).

      Speaker: Mei-Chih Chang (PSI)
    • 11:45 AM 1:15 PM
      Lunch and Networking 1h 30m
    • 1:15 PM 1:45 PM
      An Alternative to One-Size-Fits-All Programming Environments 30m

      The programming environment - the compilers, libraries and tools provided to users building their own applications - is the main interface for the majority of HPC system users. Typically HPC centers provide a single environment that provides a rich set of tools and libraries, configured via module files to meet the needs of individual use cases. As centers offer HPC access to more communities with diverse workflows this "one size fits all" approach becomes very difficult to maintain. This talk will look at alternative approaches for providing use-case specific environments being developed for the Alps system at CSCS.

      Speaker: Ben Cumming (CSCS)
    • 1:45 PM 2:15 PM
      A Tale of Cattle and Pets 30m

      Given the HPC community at the University of Lausanne is highly heterogenous, some users perfectly fit the regular HPC environments while others need some helpers. This talk presents the journey of a new HPC user at UNIL, from the introductory courses, through the computing facility offers, and the craft of customization for specific needs.

      Speaker: Emmanuel Jeanvoine (University of Lausanne)
    • 2:15 PM 2:30 PM
      Farewell and End of the Meeting 15m