Welcome

• Gunnar Landgren (KTH)

The Swedish e-Science Research Centre (SeRC) - advancing e-Science in Sweden

• Dan Henningson (KTH Mechanics)

The Swedish e-science Research Centre (SeRC) is formed by the universities in Stockholm and Linköping – KTH, Linköping University (LiU), Stockholm University (SU) and Karolinska Institutet (KI) – around the two largest high- performance computing (HPC) centres in Sweden: PDC at KTH and NSC at LiU. Research at SeRC is focused on the collaboration between tool makers and tool users, and brings together a core of nationally leading IT research teams with expertise in e-Science method development and leading scientists in selected application areas. SeRC will constitute a leading visionary e-Science node with a national scope and strong international ties Substantially increased collaboration between applied and method-oriented groups is needed, and SeRC will provide a platform for this. Our approaches to reach these goals are: 1. Formation of e-Science Communities that connect application groups with relevant core e-Science groups and computer experts at PDC and NSC. 2. Research in core e-Science methods such as distributed resources, database technology, numerical analysis, visualization and interaction, mathematical modeling and parallel algorithms, focusing on problems critical for several e-Science communities. 3. Much closer collaboration between PDC and NSC, and a substantial increase in advanced support staff, which will turn the centers into comprehensive e- Science enablers. SeRC is also taking a national responsibility in the e-Science area in terms of hosting a large part of the Swedish e-Science infrastructure through PDC and NSC. Already today these two high performance computing centers take the nationally leading role, which will be further developed within SeRC beyond the hardware aspect of e-Infrastructure.

Multiscale Simulations using particles

• Petros Koumoutsakos (ETHZ)

This presentation will discuss a particle-based framework for multiscale simulations of transport processes in problems ranging from fluid mechanics to biology. The talk will highlight recent advances in the development of wavelet based adaptivity for particle methods, the coupling of atomistic and continuum descriptions and discuss the implementation of these methods in massively parallel computer architectures.

HP2C.ch – Simulations software development for next generation supercomputers

• Thomas Schulthess (Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) at Manno)

In fall 2009 numerous applications sustained a petaflop/s under productions conditions on “Jaguar”, the Cray XT5 system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and delivering impactful scientific results. Sustained petaflop/s computing thus came about several years before the first “planned sustained petaflop/s systems” – the IBM Blue Waters system at NCSA – would come online in 2011. The experiences and lessons learned from the application developments that led to this surprising early success of petaflop/s computing will be discussed in the light of ongoing discussions around the roadmap towards exascale computing. Specifically, we will discuss the Swiss platform for High-Performance and High-Productivity Computing (hp2c.ch<http://hp2c.ch>), a program that could serve as a model for European contributions toward exascale computing.

SNIC Interaction: Gaining Access to European Resources (DEISA, PRACE, HPC-Europe)

• Lilit Axner (KTH)
• Antti Pursula (CSC)

SNIC

• Sverker Holmgren (SNIC)

eSSENCE

• Göran Sandberg (Lunarc)

20 Years of PDC

• Lennart Johnsson (The University of Houston)

Cray Inauguration

• Sverker Holmgren (SNIC)
• Ulla Thiel (Cray)
• Erwin Laure (PDC)

Trends in Microprocessor Design

• Leif Nordlund (AMD)

In this presentation we will provide reflections on the Multicore CPU and the GPGPU architecture developments, different ways to get closer to Exascale solutions as well as Heterogeneous computing

Exascale computing, a new challenge ahead

• Mario Mattia (Cray)

A brief overview of the Cray XE6 supercomputer will be given. A highlight of some key challenges along the road of exaflop computing will also be provided.

PRACE - Europe on the Road to Exascale Computing

• Kimmo Koski (CSC)

Within the last two years a consortium of 20 European countries has prepared the legal and technical prerequisites for the establishment of a leadership-class supercomputing infrastructure in Europe. The consortium named "Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe" has carried out a preparatory phase project supported by the European Commission. The statutes of the new association, a Belgian "association sans but lucrative", were signed in April 2010 and its inauguration took place in June 2010. So far, four members have committed to provide compute cycles worth € 100 Million each in the 5 years period until 2015. The hosting countries in succession foresee the installation of machines of the highest performance class (Tier-0), providing a diversity of architectures beyond Petaflop/s performance with increasing capability. Access to the infrastructure is provided on the basis of scientific quality through a pan-European peer review system under the guidance of the scientific steering committee (SSC) of PRACE. The SSC is a group of leading European peers from a variety of fields in computational science and engineering. Proposals can be submitted in form of projects or as programs by communities. In May 2010 a first early-access call was issued, and the provision of computer time through PRACE is foreseen commencing in August 2010 by the supercomputer JUGENE of Research Centre Jülich. Regular provision will start in November 2010. PRACE's Tier-0 supercomputing infrastructure will be complemented by national centres (Tier-1) of the PRACE partners. In the tradition of DEISA, the Tier-1 centres will provide limited access to national systems for European groups granted through national peer review and synchronized by PRACE. Under the umbrella of PRACE, a first implementation project will start soon and a second and third one are intended to follow in 2011 and 2013, respectively. The short-term goal is to Petascale facilities, tools, algorithms and applications, the long-term goal is to provide a pathway towards Exascale computing.

Panel Discussion: Nordic Supercomputing - A call for increased collaboration?

• Kimmo Koski (CSC Center for Scientific Computing (Finland))
• Jacko Koster (UNINETT The Norwegian research network)
• Lennart Johnsson (PDC/KTH)
• Sverker Holmgren (SNIC)

Over the past couple of years intense discussions on the future landscape of Nordic computing have taken place and now we see first concrete steps with a high-throughput prototype being jointly commissioned by DCSC, UNINETT Sigma, and SNIC, and CSC planning to build a large scale computer center in northern Finland. These developments together with international developments on EGI, DEISA, and PRACE open a number of questions both from an operational as well as usage view. In this panel we try to discuss questions like - Is there a need for national resources? How much? - How can cross-country user access be organized in a fair way? - Could remote hosting lead to a drain of knowledge? - What systems should be centralized/distributed? - Do we need a "Nordic Supercomputer" or are the PRACE resources sufficient? What will be the role of EGI? - How to position Sweden and the Nordic countries on the European and international landscape? - How should advanced user support be organized? - What will be the impact of energy-reuse techniques? - What are the metrics to be taken into account for a decision? and of course the panel will be happy to discuss any further questions asked by the audience.

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