HPC Happenings

TACC Hosts Parallel Programming Contest
January 13, 2014 – Austin, Texas

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is holding a parallel programming contest sponsored by BP America on January 13, 2014 and January 17, 2014 from 10 AM CST to 3 PM CST. This two-phase contest will be held both online and in-person at TACC. In the first phase, which will begin at 10 AM CST on January 13 2014, the contestants will be given two serial programs written in C that they will be required to parallelize. They will be expected to develop three parallel versions of the given serial programs using MPI, OpenMP and CUDA in a fixed time period. The top 25 participants will be invited to participate in the second phase of the contest to be held on January 17, 2014. The second phase will have the same rules and requirements as the first phase. The parallel programs will be judged according to the following three criteria: accuracy of results, performance of the programs, and the time-to-development. The top 10 participants will be recognized for their efforts. For complete detailed information, please visit https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/tacc-bp-ppc.

NSF Advances National Efforts Enabling Data-Driven Discovery
National Science Foundation

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced several partnerships aimed at big data discovery, innovation, and education. In March 2012, the Obama administration announced its National Big Data Research and Development Initiative, and NSF has served as a leader in the project. When the initiative began, six federal departments and agencies promised more than $200 million in new commitments to help create big data tools and techniques to extract knowledge and accelerate discovery and innovation. NSF has developed foundational technologies, created infrastructure, and encouraged research communities. To read further, please visit http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=129244&org=NSF&from=news

Hurricane Force Supercomputing: Petascale Simulations of Sandy

The devastation incurred by the landfall of Hurricane Sandy on the northeast coast of the United States just over one year ago exemplifies the need for further advances in accuracy and reliability in numerical weather prediction.  High-resolution numerical weather simulations carried out on hundreds of thousands of processors on the largest supercomputers are providing these very insights. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model has been employed on the largest yet storm prediction model using real data of over 4 billion points to simulate the landfall of Hurricane Sandy. Using an unprecedented 13,680 nodes (437,760 cores) of the Cray XE6 Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications  at the University of Illinois, the team of Peter Johnsen from Cray, Inc., Mark Straka from NCSA, and Mel Shapiro, Alan Norton, and Tom Galarneau from NCAR achieved an unprecedented level of performance for any weather model.  The model used approximately 4 billion grid points at an extremely fine resolution of 500 meters.  Forecast data was written and analyzed by the NCAR team members using the NCAR VAPOR visualization suite. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2013/11/14/behind-blue-waters-hurricane-sandy-simulation/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_5807125690411159555#!.

Call for Projects: XSEDE Student Summer Research Opportunities
Submission Deadline - December 31, 2013
Student Application Process Begins – January 3, 2014

The XSEDE Student Engagement Program is seeking projects for undergraduate and graduate students to work on during a 10-week immersion experience for this summer. Working with XSEDE researchers and staff, students make meaningful contributions to research, development and systems projects that benefit the national scientific and computational community. In exchange, students are provided travel support for project orientation and to attend the XSEDE'14 conference in Atlanta, GA in July, and a small stipend. For complete details, please visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SRE-Projects-2014.

Save the Date for XSEDE14
July 13-18, 2014 = Atlanta, Georgia

The annual XSEDE conference brings together the extended community of individuals interested in advancing research cyberinfrastructure and integrated digital services for the benefit of science and society. XSEDE14 will place a special emphasis on recruiting and engaging under-represented minorities, women, and students as well as encouraging participation by people from domains of study that do not traditionally use high-performance computing. Sessions will be structured to engage people who are new to computational science and engineering, as well as providing in-depth tutorials and high-quality peer-reviewed papers that will allow the most experienced researchers to gain new insights and knowledge. For more information, please visit https://conferences.xsede.org/.

Micron Exposes the Double Life of Memory with Automata Processor

If we had to take a pick from some of the most compelling announcements from SC13, the news from memory vendor (although that narrow distinction may soon change) Micron about its new Automata processor is at the top of the list. While at this point there’s still enough theory to lead us to file this under a technology to watch, the concept is unique in what it promises—both to Micron’s future and the accelerator/CPU space for some key HPC-oriented workloads. In a nutshell, the Automata processor is a programmable silicon device that lends itself to handling high-speed search and analysis across massive, complex, unstructured data. As an alternate processing engine for targeted areas, it taps into the inner parallelism inherent to memory to provide a robust and absolutely remarkable (if early benchmarks are to be believed) option for certain types of processing. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2013/11/22/micron-exposes-memorys-double-life-automata-processor/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_5809867680429154304#!.

Petascale Computing Resource Allocations  (PRAC) with Blue Waters

In 2013, a new NSF-funded petascale computing system, Blue Waters, was deployed at the University of Illinois.  The goal of this project and system is to open up new possibilities in science and engineering by providing computational capability that makes it possible for investigators to tackle much larger and more complex research challenges across a wide spectrum of domains.  The purpose of this solicitation is to invite research groups to submit requests for allocations of resources on the Blue Waters system. Proposers must show a compelling science or engineering challenge that will require petascale computing resources. Proposers must also be prepared to demonstrate that they have a science or engineering research problem that requires and can effectively exploit the petascale computing  capabilities offered by Blue Waters.  Proposals from or including junior researchers are encouraged, as one of the goals of this solicitation is to build a community capable of using petascale computing. For more information, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503224&org=CISE&from=home.

HPC Conference Calls for Participation

UNICORE Summit 2014 - Call for Contribution
June 24, 2014 - Leipzig, Germany
(in walking distance to ISC'14)

The UNICORE Summit is a unique opportunity for UNICORE users, developers, administrators, researchers, service providers and managers to meet. Participate to share your experience, present your own developments, present planned developments, learn about the latest UNICORE features and get new ideas for interesting and prosperous collaborations. To read further, please visit http://www.unicore.eu/summit/2014/.

2014 TARRAGONA INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON TRENDS IN COMPUTING (SSTiC 2014) – First Announcement
July 7-11, 2014 - Tarragona, Spain

SSTiC 2014 will be a research training event mainly addressed to PhD students and PhD holders in the first steps of their academic career. It intends to update them about the most recent developments in the diverse branches of computer science and its neighboring areas. To that purpose, renowned scholars will lecture and will be available for interaction with the audience should be graduate students from around the world. There are no formal pre-requisites in terms of the academic degree the attendee must hold. However, since there will be several levels among the courses, reference may be made to specific knowledge background in the description of some of them. SSTiC 2014 is also appropriate for more senior people who want to keep themselves updated on developments in their own field or in other branches of computer science. They will surely find it fruitful to listen and discuss with scholars who are main references in computing nowadays. For more information, please visit http://grammars.grlmc.com/sstic2014/.

GlobusWorld 2014
April 15-17, 2014 - Chicago, Illinois
Submission Deadline – February 15, 2014

Presenters will include users of these technologies at research centers, universities, high performance computing centers, and community groups. Please submit proposals centered on applications of Globus or the Globus Toolkit, and development of related technologies, with an emphasis on unique capabilities and value delivered to researchers and other end users. For more information, registration dates and submission guidelines, please visit http://globusworld.org/proposals.php.

Upcoming Conferences, Workshops and Webinars

Broadening Participation in Visualization Workshop (Hosted by Clemson University) -
February 10-11, 2014 - Clemson University, Clemson South Carolina

Regardless of your field of expertise, visualization plays a significant role in the exploration and understanding of data across all disciplines with a universal goal: gaining insight into the complex relationships that exist within the data. The need to diversify a field with such far reaching influences is imperative. CCIT is hosting the 1st CRA-W/CDC Broadening Participation in Visualization Workshop. The purpose of this workshop is to provide an opportunity for networking and mentoring among underrepresented groups in the field of visualization. This is an excellent opportunity for women and underrepresented groups to gain insight into what visualization is and how it can be helpful in their academic and professional pursuits. The workshop, scheduled for February 10-11, 2014 at Clemson University in Clemson South Carolina, is designed to inform, inspire and encourage participants to engage in the multidisciplinary dynamics of visualization. The workshop will feature visualization perspectives from academia, industry and outside organizations and will showcase numerous visualization labs on campus. For more details please visit: http://citi.clemson.edu/bpviz2014.

Research Features From Across the Country and Around the World

Wind Energy Research at NCSA

The robust growth of wind energy means that big portions of land are being used for large wind farms. While research has shown that turbine power in wind farms is influenced by the upstream wake from other turbines (power can decrease 50% compared to free-standing turbines), little is known about how a large array of wind turbines interacts with the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer at larger scales in the wind turbine array boundary layer (WTABL). To read further, please visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/stories/wind_wake/.

The Internet of Things Needs a Lot of Work
|IDG News Service

Mobile connected devices present too many challenges for users, said industry leaders during a panel at the recent Open Mobile Summit. Frog Design's Mark Rolston notes that users have to link devices, enter passwords, manage home Wi-Fi, and deal with corporate IT departments at work, and are near their limit for babysitting devices all day. The experts say the whole premise of mobile interfaces is wrong, noting devices should be asking users what they want and learning from prior events rather than forcing users to ask. "There's just a million use cases you can think of where today there's [an] interface to try to understand what the user wants, and in the future there should just be action that does the right thing," says Rick Osterloh at Google's Motorola Mobility subsidiary. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/111313-the-internet-of-things-needs-275884.html.

SDSC Uses Meteor Raspberry Pi Cluster to Teach Parallel Computing

Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, have built a Linux cluster using 16 Raspberry Pi computers as part of a program to teach children and adults the basics of parallel computing using a simple model that demonstrates how computers leverage their capacity when working together. The system, named Meteor to complement Comet – a new supercomputer to be deployed in early 2015 as the result of a recent $12 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). “The goal of Meteor is to educate kids and adults about parallel computing by providing an easy-to understand, tangible model of how computers can work together,” said Rick Wagner, SDSC’s manager for high-performance computing (HPC). “One way we achieve this is by using Meteor as a presentation tool for demonstrations, with all of its components laid out in front of the audience. More importantly, we present Meteor in a fun, informal learning environment where students can try their hands at gaming competition while learning about the benefits of parallel programming.” To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/sdsc_uses_meteor_raspberry_pi_cluster_to_teach_parallel_computing.

LINPACK Creator Sheds Light on Emerging HPC Benchmark
HPCwire

Back in June during the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC), we discussed the need for a potential alternative to the current LINPACK benchmark, which is the sturdy yardstick by which supercomputing might is measured, with its creator, Dr. Jack Dongarra. At that time, he described a new benchmarking effort that is taking shape with the input of several collaborators, called the high performance conjugate gradient (HPCG) benchmark. The news about this effort drew a great deal of positive reaction from the scientific computing community in particular as it is more in tune with the types of modern and future simulations that are actually running on LINPACK top-ranked systems on the Top500. This new benchmark will be announced in further detail tomorrow (Tuesday) during the Top500 announcement and will be made available to be tested across a wider array of systems. To read further, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2013/11/18/linpack-creator-sheds-light-emerging-hpc-benchmark/?goback=.gde_4178444_member_5808343148786626561#!.

Six Data Lists Cursed by Data Scientists

Since we do a lot of experimenting with data, we’re always excited to find new datasets to use with Mortar.  We’re saving bookmarks and sharing datasets with our team on a nearly-daily basis. There are tons of resources throughout the web, but given our love for the data scientist community, we thought we’d pick out a few of the best dataset lists curated by data scientists. To read further, please visit http://blog.mortardata.com/post/67652898761/6-dataset-lists-curated-by-data-scientists?goback=.gde_4178444_member_5818959760778608644#!.

Educator Opportunities and Information

From San Francisco to Chicago: Coding Bootcamps Are Booming
Associated Press

Hacker "boot camps," such as Dev Bootcamp, are a new type of computer programming school that promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them quickly get hired as Web developers. "Every single skill you learn here you’ll apply on your first day on the job," says Dev Bootcamp co-founder Shereef Bishay. These intensive training programs usually last for nine to 12 weeks, and students can expect to work 80 to 100 hours a week, mostly writing code in teams under the guidance of experienced software developers. "For people who are looking to get involved in software in a big way and don’t want to set aside four years for a computer science degree, this nine-week program is a terrific alternative," says Dev Bootcamp graduate Eno Compton. Over the past year, more than two dozen computer-coding schools have opened or started recruiting students in cities such as New York, Chicago, Toronto, Washington D.C., and Cambridge, Mass. To read further, please visit http://www.suntimes.com/business/19435353-420/from-san-francisco-to-chicago-coding-bootcamps-are-booming.html.

Announcing STELAR – a New NSF ITEST Resource Center

The EdLab Group is pleased to announce that Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) has launched the STEM Learning and Research (STELAR) Center, the resource center for the ITEST program. The new name reflects more focus on the dissemination of ITEST project findings, support of NSF’s priorities for the ITEST program, and meeting the needs of a large and well-connected community of practice.  The mission of STELAR is to build capacity and magnify the results of ITEST projects to deepen the impact of the ITEST program. To do so, we will focus on three core areas:
1.      Technical support that facilitates ITEST projects’ success in developing and articulating innovative models for STEM learning environments
2.      Synthesis and dissemination of ITEST projects’ findings nationally in order to inform and influence a national community of other stakeholders
3.      Outreach efforts to broaden participation in the ITEST community to individuals from organizations and communities not currently represented in the ITEST portfolio
For more information, please visit http://stelar.edc.org/.

NSF Solicitation: Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers  (ITEST)
Full Proposal Deadline - February 11, 2014
Full Proposal Deadline - November 6, 2014

The ITEST program through research and model-building activities seeks to build understandings of best practice factors, contexts and processes contributing to K-12 students' motivation and participation in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) core domains along with other STEM cognate domains (e.g., information and communications technology (ICT), computing, computer sciences, data analytics, among others) that inform education programs and workforce domains. The ITEST program funds foundational and applied research projects addressing the development, implementation, and dissemination of innovative strategies, tools, and models for engaging students to be aware of STEM and cognate careers, and to pursue formal school-based and informal out-of-school educational experiences to prepare for such careers.  For more information, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5467.

International Reach of MOOCs Is Limited by Users' Preferences
Chronicle of Higher Education

Speakers at Transatlantic Science Week, sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, note that massive open online courses (MOOCs) might democratize higher education globally, but significant progress would be required to reach such a point. Norway's minister of education and research Torbjorn Roe Isaksen says MOOCs could "give people all over the world access to education," but he is not aware of MOOCs focusing on developing countries in South America and Africa. In addition, Isaksen says MOOC provider data show that most students already have degrees and are looking to further their learning, indicating that the courses might not draw people who have not had access to higher education. "If MOOCs are going to contribute to the democratization of society, they need to reach new learners," says University of Bergen professor Dag Rune Olsen. Even China, where college overcrowding forces students to go abroad, is not fully embracing MOOCs, says Institute of International Education president Allan Goodman. To read further, please visit http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/international-reach-of-moocs-is-limited-by-users-preferences/48285.

Petition Regarding Making CS Count for Admission to UC & CSU

Please sign ACCESS' petition to George C. Johnson, Chair of University of California Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools; 
William Jacob, Chair of UC Academic Senate; 
Diana Wright Guerin, Chair of CSU Academic Senate: Computer science drives job growth and innovation in California.  Help us make computer science count as a core subject requirement—mathematics or science—for admission to UC and CSU campuses. Please sign the petition and join this campaign at http://chn.ge/1bvfqPx. To learn more about making computer science count nationally, please visit code.org.
 For specific information about why it’s important to make computer science count in California, please visit access-ca.org – the Alliance for California Computing Education for Students and Schools.

Student Engagement and Information.

Amgen Scholars Summer Research Program in Science and Biotechnology at UC Berkeley


Application Deadline - February 3, 2014

UC Berkeley is pleased to announce the 2014 Amgen Scholars Summer Research Program in Science and Biotechnology. This national program provides participants with the opportunity to conduct research with a faculty member, communicate their science in poster and oral presentations, receive a stipend, housing, meal plan, and transportation to and from the UC Berkeley campus. Program dates are June 2 - August 8, 2014. For more information about the program, please visit the following sites: UC Berkeley Amgen Scholars Program Website at http://amgenscholars.berkeley.edu
National Amgen Scholars Program Website at http://amgenscholars.com

Molecular Medicine PhD. at the Cleveland Clinic

Application Deadline – January 15, 2014


The PhD program in Molecular Medicine, offered through a partnership between the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University, is now accepting applications for Fall 2014 enrollment. The focus of this Ph.D. program is training basic scientists who will have a strong clinical background to allow the movement of discoveries from bench to bedside. The innovative and rigorous biomedical science curriculum trains students in both basic and clinical research in a collaborative multidisciplinary clinical and research environment. Each student will have a Research Thesis Advisor and a Clinical Mentor who will help design an independent study, “Clinical Experience”, in addition to core coursework. All course work is completed in the state-of-the-art facilities of the Lerner Research Institute on the main campus of the Cleveland Clinic. Students can choose rotation and thesis mentors from a diverse academic faculty in research departments at both the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University campuses. The program is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute “Med into Grad” initiative, as well as a T32 grant from the National Institute of General Medicine. Details and the online application be found at http://www.lerner.ccf.org/molecmed/phd/.

Shocker: Women Outnumber Men in This Year's Tech Hires
InfoWorld

Women represented a majority of workers filling new technology jobs created through September of this year, for the first time in at least 10 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Through September of this year, 39,000 jobs were created in computer systems design and related services, with women claiming 60 percent of these positions, up from 34 percent for all of 2012. Over the last 10 years, women filled an average of 30.8 percent of 534,000 new technology jobs. The number of women hired is roughly the same as in previous years, but the number of men has dropped, for reasons that remain unclear. However, as of September, women still represented only 31 percent of the nearly 1.7 million people working in the tech sector, a figure that has remained static over the past decade, according to the BLS. Experts are not sure if the latest BLS numbers indicates the start of a new trend. "Is this really positive change? It's too early to say," says the Anita Borg Institute's Elizabeth Ames. "But we are seeing more awareness of the issue and seeing leaders in the technology business realize it is an imperative to bring women into tech workforces." To read further, please visit http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/shocker-women-outnumber-men-in-years-tech-hires-230810.

Code.org Offers New Girl-Focused Poster

Code.org has just released a new CSEdWeek poster featuring‪ Susan Wojcicki, a Senior Vice President at Google. Forbes has called Wojcicki  the most powerful woman in advertising, and among the 20 most powerful women in the world. Although not a CS major, she took intro CS classes in college. Google's first office was in her garage. Code.org‪ founder Hadi Partovi says that he decided to release this new poster ‪because it's critical to show female role models to girls to bring them to CS. Showing just images of men isn't enough.  "Our original posters (Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Bosh) lacked a female, despite our best efforts (we asked all the best known women in tech who surprisingly rejected the opportunity)," says Partovi.‬ "Susan  is a fantastic spokesperson for computer science education, because she shows that even if you don't major in CS, even if you don't become a software engineer for life, exposure to the field is important in a world that's increasingly dependent on technology." You can request a copy of this new poster for your classroom atnhttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/1olxoWmlEqx9BrCGkYphhXlFjfHOQnFg1_cskzHjpb6Y/viewform.

Faculty Proposal News and Information

Silicon Mechanics Research Grant Proposals
Submission Deadline - March 1 2014

Silicon Mechanics  is pleased to again announce our sponsorship of a unique grant opportunity: A complete High-Performance Computing Cluster using the latest Intel processors and NVIDIA GPUs. Silicon Mechanics, an industry-leading provider of server, storage, and high-performance computing solutions, is dedicated to building relationships and collaborating with professors and researchers at universities and other research institutions. This grant program is open to all US and Canadian qualified post-secondary institutions, university-affiliated research institutions, non-profit research institutions, and researchers at federal labs with university affiliations. Submissions will be reviewed for merit and related impacts. Further details on the grant rules and the technical specifications of the cluster itself are available at: http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i43822/Research+Cluster+Grant+Information.php.

On the Lighter Side – Computational Science News on the Edge

The Human Touch Makes Robots Defter
Cornell Chronicle

Cornell University researchers are developing ways to help humans and robots work together to find the best way to do a job, an approach known as coactive learning. "We give the robot a lot of flexibility in learning," says Cornell professor Ashutosh Saxena. "We build on our previous work in teaching robots to plan their actions, then the user can give corrective feedback." The researchers started by trying to teach a Baxter robot to work on a supermarket checkout line. Baxter can be programmed by moving its arms through an action, but it also offers a mode in which a human can make adjustments. However, it is not always obvious to a human operator how best to move the arms to accomplish a particular task. To read further, please visit http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/11/human-touch-makes-robots-defter.

Old Java Can Learn New Tricks From C, Android
Computerworld

Java and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) launched 18 years ago, but could still improve in areas such as locality, application isolation, and parallel operations. The JVM, which runs Java applications on multiple hardware platforms, could acquire functionality like the C language's struct feature, which improves locality by refining the linkage between memory and processors. The JVM is likely to eventually incorporate struct capabilities that will bring a smaller footprint as well as improved locality, says Doug Lea, who serves on the governing board of the OpenJDK open source Java implementation, noting that some JVM languages, such as Scala, already have struct capability. In addition, Java could improve with Google Android's failsafe capabilities that allow application isolation, Lea says. To read further, please visit http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238294/Old_Java_can_learn_new_tricks_from_C_Android.

Virtual Reality Creates Infinite Maze in a Single Room
New Scientist

Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have developed a virtual reality (VR) system that enables users to step into a labyrinth and wander an endless maze of rooms and corridors, but without actually leaving their living rooms. Users wear a VR headset, and the system tracks their body and head movements and guides them through sets of virtual spaces as they pace around within a real physical space. The VR system automatically generates corridors and rooms as the user moves, in a manner that will limit the person to the real space available. To read further, please visit http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23321-virtual-reality-creates-infinite-maze-in-a-single-room.html#.Urcw8o0W2nA