Category: General

The workshop took place in person in the manor house Mojmírovce in Slovakia and participants had the opportunity to gain a comprehensive theoretical overview and practical experience with quantum Monte Carlo methods and their molecular (Quantum Package and CHAMP codes) and periodic systems (TurboRVB). Lectures and trainings was led by experts who are part of the European Center of Excellence TREX.

The workshop was started with an introductory speech by Ivan Štich, who also introduced the participants to the benefits of using QMC methods. The basics of quantum Monte Carlo methods were explained by prof. C. Filippi from the University of Twente, located in Enschede, the Netherlands, is one of the best public technical universities in the world. Participants during the first two days under the leadership of prof. Filippi and Anthony Scemama from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique  – CNRS) also completed hands-on training to test their skills in QMC methods.

The third day of the workshop focused on advanced methods of quantum Monte Carlo, which was introduced to the participants by Sandro Sorella from the Italian International School for Advanced Studies (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati – SISSA). Pod vedením K. Nakano zo SISSA prebiehal ďalší hands-on tréning. Počas posledného dňa sa účastníci venovali pokročilým QMC metódam a aplikáciám a to pod vedením Ivana Šticha z Institute of Physics SAS and Michele Casula of the CNRS. The last hands-on training was led by K. Nakano from SISSA and Ivan Brndiar from the Institute of Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Thanks to the QMC workshop, participants gained a general overview of the basics of QMC methods and their adaptation for simulations of molecular and periodic systems. They also had the opportunity to learn more about highly topical topics in molecular, crystalline and low-dimensional systems. The QMC workshop was a great opportunity to try out practical exercises and simulations using QMC using the CHAMP and TurboRVB programs.

The new supercomputer, which will help Slovakia partially reduce its investment debt in the field of HPC (HPC = high performance computing), will be accessible to scientists and researchers from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, all public universities and also Slovak entrepreneurs and public administration institutions. Small and medium-sized enterprises and public administration can also use the free services of the National Competence Center (NCC) for HPC,  consult on the deployment of solutions based on HPC and implement testing and so-called proof-of-concept projects. NCC supports the adoption of HPC tools in the areas of demanding numerical simulations, high-performance data analytics (HPDA), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

The entire Devana system has a purchase price of approximately EUR 2 million and will be installed - similarly to its predecessor Aurel - on the premises of the Computing Centre of the SAS at Bratislava Patrónka. The solution from Lenovo, which will be delivered by IXPERTA, will contain 2 modules - a CPU part and an accelerated part suitable especially for AI / ML applications. The CPU part will have 140 computing servers with 64 cores and 256 GB of RAM; in the accelerated part there will be 8 computing nodes, each equipped with 4 GPGPU Nvidia A100 cards. The high-speed connection will be provided by 100 Gbps Infiniband and users will also have data storage with a size of 3.8 PB.

The announcement of grant competitions and the management of applications for access to computing resources will be the responsibility of the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC). Public universities and public administration organizations can become members of the NSCC, whose role is to cover and support activities in the field of HPC in Slovakia, and thus participate in building the HPC ecosystem, develop cooperation in individual application areas at the expert level and represent the interests of its users. The Devana supercomputer can thus become a technological platform for the support of innovation and digital transformation in Slovakia with the involvement of the academic, public and private sectors. At the same time, the Slovak HPC ecosystem will prepare for further infrastructure investments from the Recovery and Resilience Plan.

The Operational Programme Integrated Infrastructure (OPII) is funded by the European Regional Development Fund and this project (311071AKF20) was supported under the OPII-2020/7/55-NP call.

The workshop was also attended by representatives of private companies, so it also included a brief introduction to the competence center, the EuroCC project and opportunities for using the HPC approach and services in Slovakia and Europe.

The head of the Czech Competence Center for HPC, Tomáš Karásek, presented interesting examples of successful cooperation with companies, but also academic institutions in this area - you can find many of them HEREAnother important topic was a comprehensive overview of available software tools in this domain. Several open-source and commercial software packages are currently available and in development, and during the workshop we also learned about their strengths and weaknesses.

At the end of this pleasant event, we exchanged experiences and procedures with Czech colleagues in cooperation with the private sector and the management of clients from small and medium-sized enterprises.

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This two-day event will include in-depths training on the flagship EoCoE codes and solvers, which focus on HPC simulations applied to energy domains, are designed and optimized to run on the latest iteration of European pre-exascale machines, and will ultimately be scaled to the upcoming exascale systems. It will allow you to test your mastery of these codes on the EoCoE Software as a Service Portal, using the computing resources of the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC).

Team of brilliant researchers, from several prominent European research centers, will host the training sessions and supervise your work.

A strong participation to the EoCoE school will be rewarded with several awards, including money prize, books, full expenses for three-day trips to Naples to join our project’s members for our final consortium meeting in Naples at the end of June, for up to six participants.

This school is a unique opportunity for participants to meet with leading researchers and experts, to try their hand at top domain codes, and to develop their network. We hope many of you will join us for this milestone event, which will conclude the second phase of the EoCoE project with a bang!

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Confidential computing is a very topical issue that is gaining in importance with the growing popularity of cloud services, and this aspect is also important in the provision of HPC (High-Performance Computing) services. These tools and techniques help providers ensure the security of client data during their processing.

Competitors' role as "service providers" was to design and train an appropriate deep neural network (DNN) and / or gradient-boosted decision tree (GBDT) model on the data set provided. The condition was that any end user - the client - could use this model to process their data without the provider being able to decode / decrypt it.

More information about the challenge that hackers could work on can be found here.

During the hackathon, participants also had the opportunity to participate in a workshop on high-performance computing, where one of our lecturers explained how high-performance computing works, what are the areas of use and what are the possibilities of access to HPC infrastructure in Slovakia.

The team from the Spacecode Technical University in Košice won the award for the solution design - congratulations! 

Aftermovie

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eINFRA and experience from the Czech Republic

Experts from CESNETwere invited to share their experiences with both NCCs in this area. CESNET is an association of universities of the Czech Republic and the Czech Academy of Sciences. It operates and develops the national e-infrastructure for science, research and education which encompasses a computer network, computational grids, data storage and collaborative environment. During the workshop, representatives of the CESNET presented such topics as:

M. Ruda: Introduction, CESNET and Metacentrum: large-scale distributed computing infrastructure and services.

D. Antoš: CESNET and Metacentrum: operation and development of data storage as a part of the national infrastructure for science and research.

Cloud services as an (un)necessary part of the HPC provider portfolio – is it profitable?

Branislav Jansík from IT4Innovations and the head of the Czech competence center Tomáš Karásek presented the requirements of users for access to cloud services. It is the motivation, requirements and expectations of users, as well as the benefits and barriers from the point of view of the HPC service provider, have been the subject of a longer discussion. Participants also debated alternative platforms, "easy-access" services, microservice, HPC "market".

Both National Competence Centers plan to integrate HPC cloud services into their portfolios using the open-source platforms OpenNebula and OpenStack. CESNET representatives who have experience with both tools shared their benefits and technical support options.

The more general debate concerned in particular the issue of systematic and long-term support for the development and operation of HPC systems as a necessary component of the national research infrastructure.

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Twinning je typ spolupráce, pri ktorej dvaja alebo viac rovnocenných partnerov poskytuje svoju expertízu pre vzájomné obohatenie. Každý z partnerov pri tom vyniká inými kompetenciami a navzájom sa tak dopĺňajú. Slovinsko a Slovensko majú na medzinárodnom poli dlhodobo veľmi dobré vzťahy a sme radi že ich v rámci projektu EuroCC môžeme začať budovať aj v oblasti vysokovýkonného počítania.

Spolupráca začala výmenou skúseností s organizovaním vzdelávacích aktivít a prácou s malými a strednými podnikmi. Pokračovať bude výmenou online kurzov, z ktorých prvé sa uskutočnia už v máji a v júni 2022 a budú k dispozícii účastníkom z oboch krajín. Kurz “Neurónové siete s knižnicou TensorFlow” poskytnú školitelia zo slovenského NCC a uskutoční sa 25. – 26. 5. 2022. Kurz “GPU programovanie s CUDA” poskytnú slovinský lektori 20. – 21. 6. 2021. Spolupráca bude pokračovať na jeseň kurzami o paralelnom programovaní vo Fortran-e a o veľkých dátach v prostredí Spark-Hadoop (detaily zverejníme neskôr). Viac informácií a registráciu na kurzy nájdete tu:

Course Neural Networks with TensorFlow

Course GPU programming in CUDA

The program begins with a several-day introductory online training, where participants learn more about HPC and get to know the entire team. In the coming weeks, they are working on individual projects, the results of which will be summarized in a short report and at the same time shown in the form of a video or presentation during the final mini-conference. The organizers also appreciate if students share their experiences on the Summer of HPC blog or through social media during the program. In the end, the best projects are awarded in the Best Visualization or Best Project categories.

Registration is open until April 12, 2022. All interesting project topics prepared by HPC experts this year can be found HERE.

Participants who will eventually participate in the program will be selected by a committee, which will also allocate a project based on their interest. One participant can choose 3 projects he would like to work on. Applicants can be from different disciplines, no previous experience with HPC is required - all you need is a desire to learn new things in the field of supercomputing!

PRACE Summer of HPC

The workshop will take place in person in the manor house Mojmírovce in Slovakia and participants will have the opportunity to gain a comprehensive theoretical overview and practical experience with quantum Monte Carlo methods and their molecular (Quantum Package and CHAMP codes) and periodic systems (TurboRVB). Lectures and trainings will be led by experts who are part of the European Center of Excellence TREX:

• Ivan Štich, Institute of Physics SAS
• Anthony Scemama, CNRS
• Claudia Filippi, Universiteit Twente
• Michele Casula, CNRS
• Sandro Sorella, SISSA

Main goals:

• Provide participants a general overview of QMC foundations and their adaptation to simulations of molecular and periodic systems.
• Provide an overview of the hot current topics in molecular, crystalline and low-dimensional systems. 
• Provide hands-on experience with practical QMC simulations based on CHAMP and TurboRVB simulation codes.
  

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