HPC Happenings
XSEDE Allocation Requests: Open Submission, Guidelines, Resource and Policy Changes
Submission Deadline – October 15, 2013
XSEDE is now accepting Research Allocation Requests for the allocation period, January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014. Please review the new XSEDE systems and important policy changes before you submit your allocation request through the XSEDE User Portal. Please also see the Resource Catalog for a list of XSEDE compute, visualization and storage resources, and more details on the new systems by visiting https://portal.xsede.org/web/guest/resources/overview.
Visit XSEDE in Booth 422 at SC13
November 18-21, 2013 – Denver, Colorado
At SC13, XSEDE will be located in Booth 422, just a row over from a main aisle and XSEDE partner, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). XSEDE will promote XSEDE14 and all partners, especially those also on the exhibit floor. We encourage XSEDE partners in attendance at SC13 to also help promote the project and our next annual conference, July 13-18, 2014, in Atlanta, GA. Copies of the new Highlights publication along with any promotional material requested will be delivered to partner booths by XSEDE staff at SC13. For more information on the conference, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/.
News at 11:00: XSEDE Staff in the News
Meet David E. Hudak, XSEDE Industry Relations
David E. Hudak, Ph.D., has joined XSEDE as the new Industry Relations Manager. Hudak earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Bowling Green State University and holds an master's and doctoral degrees in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. His doctoral work was on compilation of parallel loops to reduce interprocessor communication, using machines like an nCube, an Encore Multimax, Sequent Symmetry and BBN TC2000. "My bachelor's degree is in mathematics, so I was interested in software and hardware for numerical analysis and linear algebra. From there, HPC was a natural transition," says Hudak. Currently, he is the program director for Cyberinfrastructure and Software Development at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) working on various aspects of HPC parallel application development - technologies, techniques and tools. Hudak can be reached at dhudak@osc.edu.
XSEDE Campus Champion Jeffrey Gardner in the News
Last month, Science magazine featured XSEDE in "A Cloudburst of Computing Power" as a part of their Science Career section. Focusing on how data driven discovery becomes is affecting more scientists each day and how Jeffrey Gardner, University of Washington (UW) XSEDE Campus Champion, helps researchers with the migration from desktop to HPC. In addition to being a facilitator of computational work and director of research–physical sciences at the eScience institute at UW, Gardner is a computational astrophysicist. In fact, he has run code that utilized all 100,000-plus computer processing unit (CPU) cores and 10,000-plus hard drives of the XSEDE-allocated Kraken supercomputer at the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. To read the Science article, please visit http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_08_20/caredit.a1300177.
HPC Conference Call for Participation
Numerical Computations with GPUs – Call for Contributions
Submission Deadline – October 15, 2013
Numerical Computations with GPUs (to be published by Springer and edited by Volodymyr Kindratenko, NCSA) will contain a collection of articles on core numerical methods adapted for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Classical numerical methods (solution of linear equations, FFT, etc.) are at the core of many scientific and engineering computations. In recent years substantial efforts were undertaken to adapt these methods for recently emerged GPU-based systems. The book is envisioned as a consolidation of such work into a single volume covering widely used methods and techniques. Researchers working on the development and implementation of numerical methods on GPUs are invited to submit their work for consideration for inclusion in the book. Submissions will be accepted through EasyChair and should include a short proposal. Questions should be directed to the editor, Volodymyr Kindratenko at kindrtnk@illinois.edu. For details on the full solicitation and submission guidelines and processes, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/~kindr/editorial/ncgpu/index.html.
Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars
2013 SACNAS National Conference
October 3–6, 2013 - San Antonio, Texas
SACNAS is a way for you to expose your students to incredible resources and the validating and inspiring environment of SACNAS where they have the unique opportunity to engage with science, culture, and community. The SACNAS National Conference also provides an important place for you to recharge as a professional, as you connect with peers, build your own networks, and recruit new students. For complete conference information, please visit http://sacnas.org/events/national-conf?.
ACM 6th Workshop on Many-Task Computing on Clouds, Grids, and Supercomputers (MTAGS) 2013 @ SC13
November 17, 2013 – Denver, Colorado
The 6th workshop on Many-Task Computing on Grids and Supercomputers (MTAGS) will provide the scientific community a dedicated forum for presenting new research, development, and deployment efforts of large-scale many-task computing (MTC) applications on large scale clusters, Grids, Supercomputers, and Cloud Computing infrastructure. MTC, the theme of the workshop encompasses loosely coupled applications, which are generally composed of many tasks (both independent and dependent tasks) to achieve some larger application goal. This workshop will cover challenges that can hamper efficiency and utilization in running applications on large-scale systems, such as local resource manager scalability and granularity, efficient utilization of raw hardware, parallel file system contention and scalability, data management, I/O management, reliability at scale, and application scalability. We welcome paper submissions on all theoretical, simulations, and systems topics related to MTC, but we give special consideration to papers addressing petascale to exascale challenges. Papers will be peer-reviewed, and accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings as part of the ACM digital library (pending approval). The workshop will be co-located with the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing 2013 Conference. For more information and submission guidelines, please visit
http://sc13.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=wksp135.
SC13
November 17 - 22, 2013 - Denver, Colorado
SC13, the premier annual international conference on high-performance computing, networking, and storage, will be held in Denver, Colorado. The Technical Papers Program at SC is the leading venue for presenting the highest-quality original research, from the foundations of HPC to its emerging frontiers. The conference committee solicits submissions of excellent scientific merit that introduce new ideas to the field and stimulate future trends on topics such as applications, systems, parallel algorithms, and performance modeling. For more information, please visit http://sc13.supercomputing.org/content/papers.
Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World
TACC Formalizes New HPC Evaluation Lab
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin has merged a set of existing benchmark and computer performance activities under the Advanced Computing Evaluation Lab (ACELab). The goal of the lab is to analyze and accelerate effective use of future computing technologies for computational science research. The lab will achieve this through the deployment of state-of-the-art hardware, measurement and documentation of the characteristics of important user applications, and the creation of new and updated benchmarks. To read further, please visit http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/news/press-releases/2013/acelab.
UC San Diego Set to Announce $20 Million for Atmospheric Research Program
Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla announced a five-year, $20 million award from the National Science Foundation to support an innovative program of research and education on how interactions between air and sea alter the chemistry of the atmosphere to influence climate. The grant will support the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Climate and the Environment (CAICE), led by the University of California, San Diego, which will leverage the expertise of top scientists from nine universities to understand how particles released from the ocean influence the environment—from local water supplies to global climate. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/uc_san_diego_set_to_announce_20_million_for_atmospheric_research_program?utm_campaign=thisweek&utm_medium=email&utm_source=tw-2013-09-09.
Educator Opportunities and Information
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for NSF 13-126, Common Guidelines for Education Research and Development
A Report from the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, August 2013
In January 2011, a Joint Committee of representatives from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) began work to establish cross- agency guidelines for improving the quality, coherence, and pace of knowledge development in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. The committee formed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of both agencies’ STEM education research and development programs in response to recommendations from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) (Zients, 2012). Although the starting place for the committee was research in STEM, ED quickly realized the broader applicability of the guidelines to other content areas in which it funds research and development. To view the frequently asked questions, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13127/nsf13127.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click.
Global 2013 STEMx Education Conference (webinar)
September 19-21, 2013
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is hosting the Global 2013 STEMx Education Conference, the world's first massively open online conference (MOOC) for educators. Focused on science, technology, engineering, math, and other "STEMx" skills needed for students to compete and innovate in the 21st century, the conference will be held online—day-and-night—over the course of three days. For a list of speakers and topics, please visit http://stemxcon.com/.
Internet of Things Trial Set to Transform UK Schools
V3.co.uk
Eight schools in the United Kingdom are a testing a technology that could lead to widespread use of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in education and progress toward the Internet of Things (IoT). Funded by the Technology Strategy Board and backed by the Distance consortium, the project will test various applications of M2M technology to determine how it could best be used in education. "We believe the IoT has captured the imagination of academia, businesses, and consumers around the world, promising to have an enormous impact on the digital economy," says Chad Jones of Distance consortium member Xively. "While Android and iOS carved a path for almost anyone to participate, many predict the Internet of things is driving an order-of-magnitude jump in the type of commercial opportunities the economy will generate." Teaching children about the IoT is critical to the creation of future problem-solving technologies, says Duncan Wilson, principal investigator of the Collaborative Research Institute sustainable cities project at Intel, another member of the Distance consortium. To read further, please visit http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2290184/internet-of-things-trial-set-to-transform-uk-schools.
Did You Know NSTA Hosts a Webinar Series?
Fall is here and NSTA's live online PD is in full swing. If you haven't yet checked out the wide range of interactive programming available via the NSTA Learning Center, now is the time to log on! NSTA web seminars are a fun, convenient way to brush up on your science content knowledge, learn strategies for the classroom, and discover new resources to use with students. You can tune in live on weekday evenings or view archives of more than 500 past programs at any time. Here are just a few of the web seminars coming up in the next few week. To view the webinar calendar and to search the archives, please visit http://learningcenter.nsta.org/products/webseminars.aspx.
Student Engagement and Information
2014 ARTSI Robotics Competition at the Tapia Conferenc
February 8, 2014 - Seattle, Washington
Team Registration Deadline - January 15, 2014
Sponsored by iAAMCS
Some events can be done in simulation. The main event must be done on a real robot, but loaner robots will be sent out to schools that need them. The competition uses the Tekkotsu software framework, a free, open source platform developed at Carnegie Mellon. The robot is the Calliope2SP, co-developed by RoPro Design and Carnegie Mellon, and based on the iRobot Create. For more information, please visit http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ARTSI/Robotics14/.
Team America Rocketry Challenge 2014
Registration Opens – September 4, 2013
Registration Deadline – December 1, 2013
Flight Deadline – March 31, 2014
Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) is an aerospace design and engineering event for teams of US secondary school students (7th through 12th grades) run by the NAR and the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA). Teams can be sponsored by schools or by nonprofit youth organizations such as Scouts, 4-H, or Civil Air Patrol (but not the NAR or other rocketry organizations). The goal of TARC is to motivate students to pursue aerospace as an exciting career field, and it is co-sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers, Estes Industries, the Department of Defense, and NASA. The event involves designing and building a model rocket (650 grams or less, using NAR-certified model rocket motors totaling 80 N-sec or less of total impulse) that carries a payload of two Grade A Large eggs for a flight duration of 48 - 50 seconds, and to an altitude of exactly 825 feet (measured by an onboard altimeter), and that then returns the eggs to earth uncracked using only two identical-sized parachutes as a recovery device. Onboard timers are allowed; radio-control and pyrotechnic charges are not. For more information, please visit http://www.nar.org/TAchallenge.html. Please visit http://www.rocketcontest.org/pdf/TARC_2014_Rules.pdf for challenge rules and guidelines. The 2014 Application Packet can be found by visiting http://www.rocketcontest.org/. If you have any questions about forming a team or filling out the packet please send email to Anne Ward at anne.ward@aia-aerospace.org.
Career Opportunities
Computer Systems Engineer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - REQ # 76330
The Computer Systems Engineer II (C60.2) at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) reports to the manager of the Operations Technology Group (OTG) and provides a variety of engineering support services in an HPC computational environment. Assignments will include but are not limited to the following: applications programming development and maintenance of tools needed to ensure the health of large systems, systems administration, business systems analysis that fulfill the requirements of a monitoring system, creating and implementing systems monitoring processes, advanced technical problem resolution in order to support and ensure the accessibility, reliability, security and connectivity of the large-scale computational systems in a 24 x 7 production environment. For more information and to apply, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=76330.
Data Warehouse Engineer (Lead)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - REQ # 76316
IT Business Systems department at Berkeley Lab is looking for a motivated and talented professional to join their Enterprise Decision Support Systems (EDSS) group as a Data warehouse Engineer. We are a small and agile team of highly skilled individuals who are driven by the desire to deliver innovative and exceptional BI solutions to our business community. In this role, you will collaborate with our key functional system owners/representatives to understand, model and analyze - business requirements, processes and data; identify business rules and develop test plans. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=76316.
On the Lighter Side - Computational News of Interest
Robot Mom Would Beat Robot Butler in Popularity Contest
Penn State Live
Pennsylvania State University (PSU) researchers have found that people express more positive feelings toward a robot that takes care of them than toward a robot that needs care. "How the robot is presented to users can send important signals to users about its helpfulness and intelligence, which can have consequences for how it is received by end users," says PSU professor S. Shyam Sundar. The researchers observed 60 interactions between college students and a social robot called Nao. The participants either helped Nao calibrate its eyes, or the robot could examine the participants' eyes and make suggestions to improve their vision. The participants then answered questions about their feelings toward Nao. To read further, please visit http://news.psu.edu/story/280987/2013/07/08/research/robot-mom-would-beat-robot-butler-popularity-contest/
Your Future iPhone May Be Stuffed With Wax
Wired News
Researchers from the universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania are using wax to investigate a new kind of smartphone and tablet processor to address overheating issues related to chip speed. Michigan professor Milo Martin and his collaborators think microprocessors can achieve significant performance upgrades if they are built to make intermittent bursts of unprecedented speeds and then allowed to rest. The wax or paraffin would protect the chips from overheating during "computational sprinting" by absorbing the heat. The researchers believe computational sprinting can lead to energy savings, with Martin noting "there are actually some situations where it makes more sense to operate in sprint and rest." To read further, please visit http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/sprinting/.
