HPC Happenings
XSEDE13 Announces Call for Participation
July 22-25, 2013 – San Diego, California
XSEDE13: Gateway to Discovery is coming to San Diego! The conference will support and enhance the world of advanced digital resources and services and highlight scientific discovery facilitated through Science Gateways. Scientists, engineers, social scientists, and humanities experts at colleges, universities, and research centers around the world use these gateways, resources, and services to make our lives healthier, safer, and better. XSEDE, the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the largest collection of distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research in the United States. As the second annual conference of XSEDE, XSEDE13 is a forum for the presentation of high-quality technical papers, posters, tutorials, and Birds of a Feather sessions that will facilitate greater communication among scientists and students who use XSEDE and other cyberinfrastructure resources. For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xsede13/call-for-participation.
John Towns Named to Compute Canada Board of Directors
John Towns, project director for XSEDE, joins leaders in industry, academia, and computational research as a newly elected member of the board of directors for Compute Canada. This inaugural board is a part of a new governance model the group launched in October to develop and support the shared use of advanced computing to enable research and innovation in Canada. The board's first meeting is scheduled for Nov. 19, 2012. For more information, please visit https://computecanada.ca/index.php/en/about-us/news/general-news/12-news-english/245-compute-canada-calcul-canada-inaugural-board-of-directors-will-advance-canada-s-research-and-innovation-agenda
SuperData Summit
November 15, 2012 – San Diego, California
Everyone knows that data is growing exponentially. What’s not so clear is how to unlock the value it holds. In this digital world every transaction, every phone call, every change in the weather is a new data point. This will only increase as new devices create new data points. Supercomputers, parallel processing, new devices and "the Cloud" are taking analytics and data mining to the next level.Every day "Big Data" Analytics reveal new fresh insights in energy needs, medical, finance and social media. The results are more accurate medical diagnoses, real-time fraud detection, and custom-targeted advertising. For more information and to register, please visit www.superdatasummit.com.
Now on the Web: XSEDE-related Presentations and Events at SC12
The XSEDE project and its staff members are well represented in the technical program and on the exhibit floor at SC12. The link below includes the schedule for all known speakers, presenters, events and booths related to XSEDE. Please submit any additional XSEDE-related information for this page to Susan McKenna, mckennas@ncsa.illinois.edu. To view the XSEDE-related presentations and events, please visit https://www.xsede.org/xsede-sc.
HPC Call for Participation for Upcoming Workshops
Rice University 2012 Oil and Gas HPC Workshop – Call for Abstracts
February 28, 2013 – Houston, Texas
Submission Deadline – November 23, 2012
3rd IHPCES Call for Papers
June 5-7, 2013 - Barcelona, Spain
Submission Deadline – January 15, 2013
The 3rd International Workshop on Advances in High-Performance Computational Earth Sciences: Applications and Frameworks (IHPCES) has opened the call for papers, with a deadline of Jan. 15, 2013. IHPCES is co-chaired by Yifeng Cui, research scientist at SDSC and member of XSEDE ECSS. The workshop facilitates communication between earth scientists, applied mathematicians, and computational and computer scientists. It also presents a unique opportunity for participants to exchange advanced knowledge, insights and science discoveries. Co-chair Cui encourages XSEDE researchers and users to participate by submitting a paper reflecting current research in the area of computational science. IHPCES 2013 is held in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS2013. For more information, please visit http://hpgeoc.sdsc.edu/IHPCES2013/index.html.
Upcoming Conferences and Workshops
EDUCAUSE
November 6-9, 2012 - Denver, Colorado
The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference is the premiere gathering for higher education IT professionals. It provides content and exploration of today's toughest technology issues facing campuses around the world, and convenes some of the brightest minds in the community. When colleagues from around the world converge with some of the most innovative corporate solution providers, you have an event that creates invaluable networking opportunities and professional development. For more information, please visit http://www.educause.edu/annual-conference.
SC12
November 10-16, 2012 - Salt Lake City, Utah
Exhibition - November 12-15, 2012
For 24 years, SC has been at the forefront in gathering the best and brightest minds in supercomputing together, with our unparalleled technical papers, tutorials, posters and speakers. SC12 will take a major step forward not only in supercomputing, but in super-conferencing, with everything designed to make the 2012 conference the most ‘you' friendly conference in the world. We're streamlining conference information and moving to a virtually real-time method of determining technical program thrusts. No more pre-determined technical themes picked far in advance. Through social media, data mining, and active polling, we'll see which technical interests and issues emerge throughout the year, and focus on the ones that interest you the most. For more information and to register, please visit http://sc12.supercomputing.org/content/exhibitor-prospectus.
2013 Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference – Call for Participation
February 7-9, 2013 – Washington, DC
Application Deadline – November 25, 2012
The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference has issued a call for participation, inviting submissions for panel discussions, student research posters, birds-of-a-feather sessions and workshops. Additionally, applications are now being accepted for the Doctoral Consortium and student scholarships to attend the conference. Confirmed speakers include Vint Cerf (Google VP and ACM President), Armando Fox (UC Berkeley), Anita Jones (University of Virginia), Jeanine Cook (New Mexico State University), Annie Anton (Georgia Tech), and Hakim Weatherspoon, (Cornell University), among others. For more information, please visit the http://tapiaconference.org/2013/.
XSEDE Training at a Glance.
Parallel Computing at TACC: Ranger to Stampede Transition
November 6, 2912 – 9:00am- 5:00pm EST- TACC
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/72.
Sneak Preview: The Stampede Supercomputer and the Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor
November 12, 2012 – 8:00am- 11:00am EST – TACC
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/74.
Stampede Early User Training - webinar
December 6, 2012 – 9:00am- 4:00pm CST
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/76.
Parallel Computing at TACC: Ranger to Stampede Transition
December 11, 2012- 9:00am- 5:00pm EST – Cornell University
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/73.
Writing a Successful XSEDE Allocation Proposal - webinar
December 12, 2012 – 2:00pm- 3:00pm EST
For more information, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar/-/training/class/75.
For a complete list of past and future XSEDE training opportunities, please visit https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/course-calendar.
Research Features from Across XSEDE and Campus Champion Partners
Robots at War: Georgia Tech Scholars Debate the Ethical Issues
Lethal autonomous systems are gradually penetrating battlefield operations, and Georgia Tech professor Ronald C. Arkin predicts the advent of robots that are ethically superior to human soldiers. "I'm taking about ... very specific machines for certain tasks that will work alongside human war fighters to carry out particular types of operations that humans don't do particularly well at, such as building-clearing operations," he says. Arkin has created algorithms for an ethical governor to direct such machines to either shoot or hold their fire in accordance with international rules of law. The algorithms came out of a project funded by a three-year grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to produce an artificial conscience to guide robots in the battlefield independent of human control. Arkin says the decision-making architecture could potentially support the creation of ethically superior robotic fighters in as little as one to two decades. To read further, please visit http://chronicle.com/article/Moral-Robots-the-Future-of/134240/,
Intel and HP to Build World's Most Efficient Supercomputer
Researchers at Hewlett-Packard and Intel are developing an energy-efficient supercomputing system for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The system will be powered by a combination of current 32nm Xeon E5 processors and future 22nm Ivy Bridge processors, together with about 600 Xeon Phi co-processors. When fully operational, the system's total peak performance should exceed one petaflop, making it the largest supercomputer dedicated solely to renewable energy and energy efficiency research. The installation will use warm water liquid cooling technology to maximize the reuse of heat. Excess heat from the system will be guided into neighboring offices and labs and sent to other areas of the NREL campus to reduce central heating costs. The cooling system should help the NREL facility to become the world's most efficient data center, with a power usage effectiveness rating of at least 1.06. To read further, please visit http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/091112-intel-and-hp-to-build-262345.html.
North Carolina State University Researchers Craft Program to Stop Cloud Computer Problems Before They Start
North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers have developed software that prevents performance disruptions in cloud computing systems by automatically identifying and responding to abnormal activities before they develop into larger problems. The program analyzes the amount of memory being used, network traffic, central processing unit (CPU) usage, and other data in a cloud computing infrastructure to determine what behaviors can be classified as normal. The software defines normal behavior for every virtual machine in the cloud and then looks for changes that could affect the system's ability to provide service to its users. If the program identifies a virtual machine that is acting abnormally, it runs a diagnostic that can determine which metrics are affected without exposing other data. "If we can identify the initial deviation and launch an automatic response, we can not only prevent a major disturbance, but actually prevent the user from even experiencing any change in system performance," says NCSU professor Helen Gu. To read further, please visit http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-gu-ubl/.
Southampton Researchers Engineers a Raspberry Pi Supercomputer
University of Southampton researchers have developed Iridis-Pi, a supercomputer made from 64 Raspberry Pi computers and Lego. "We installed and built all of the necessary software on the Pi, starting from a standard Debian Wheezy system image, and we have published a guide so you can build your own supercomputer," says Southampton professor Simon Cox. Iridis-Pi runs off of one 13 Amp mains socket and uses Message Passing Interface to communicate between nodes using Ethernet. The researchers note the entire system cost less than 2,500 pounds Sterling and includes 64 processors and one terabyte of memory. To read further, please visit http://www.southampton.ac.uk/mediacentre/features/raspberry_pi_supercomputer.shtml.
Data Supercell at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has developed and deployed a cost-effective, disk-based file repository and data-management system called the Data Supercell. This innovative technology, developed by a PSC team of scientists, provides major advantages over traditional tape-based archiving for large-scale datasets. The PSC team exploited increasing cost-effectiveness of commodity disk technologies, and adapted sophisticated PSC-developed file system software (called SLASH2) to create a new class of integrated storage services. A patent application is under review. The Data Supercell is intended especially to serve users of large scientific datasets, including users of XSEDE (the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment), the National Science Foundation cyberinfrastructure program, the world’s largest collection of integrated digital resources and services. “The Data Supercell is a unique technology, building on the increasing cost-effectiveness of disk storage and the capabilities of PSC’s SLASH2 file system,” said Michael Levine and Ralph Roskies, PSC co-scientific directors. “It will go far to enable more efficient, flexible analyses of very large-scale datasets.” To read further, please visit http://www.psc.edu/index.php/newscenter/71-2012press/728-data-supercell-at-pittsburgh-supercomputing-center.
Educator News and Curriculum
Introductory CS Course Projects: It's All About Inclusion
Submission Deadline – December 10, 2012
The objective of this competition is to have undergraduate students develop descriptions of computing projects that are exciting, inspiring, and appealing to students from underrepresented groups (African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and People with Disabilities). The projects can be artistic (for example using motion detection to make music with body movement) or practical (for example using embedded microchips to help in emergency situations). Medical, cultural, economic - the projects can focus on any topic so long as it includes computing. The competition does not require implementation of the proposed project. Award recipients will present a poster at the 2013 SIGCSE Conference. For more information on the competition, please visit http://www.cmd-it.org/workshops/IntroProjects2012.
Stanford Launches 16 Online Courses for Fall Quarter
Stanford University has launched 16 new online courses and two new home-grown platforms for interactive learning this fall. Stanford's new online courses cover topics in computer science, mathematics, linguistics, science writing, sociology, and education. The two platforms each have distinct features and capabilities, such as video lectures, discussion forums, peer assessment, problem sets, quizzes, and team projects. Class2Go is a new open source platform developed by Stanford engineers that will host "An Introduction to Computer Networks" and a course on solar cells. The other new platform, called Venture Lab, will host "Technology Entrepreneurship," which attracted 37,000 students when it was first offered last spring, as well as other courses. Venture Lab, developed by Stanford's Amin Saberi, was designed for use by students working in teams. To read further, please visit http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/online-courses-fall-090712.html.
Student Engagement Opportunities and Information
Computational Biologist/Biophysicist Postdoctoral Fellow
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Req #75126
The position requires development of novel methods for the analysis of and integration of OMIC data with phenotypic data for identifying biomarkers. Applicant will develop computational methods (i) for improved understanding of diseased models from high content screening of multicellular systems as a result of perturbation of the microenvironment, and (ii) to identify molecular basis of tumor subtypes from high content screening of tumor histologies. This is an exciting opportunity to expand in multiple directions, to gain new insights for developing new therapeutic targets, and obtain independent grants. For more information and to apply, please visit https://lbl.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=75126.
The Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship
The application process is now open for the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF) at https://www.krellinst.org/doecsgf/application/. This is an exciting opportunity for doctoral students to earn up to four years of financial support along with outstanding benefits and opportunities while pursuing degrees in fields of study that utilize high performance computing technology to solve complex problems in science and engineering.
For more information regarding the fellowship and to access the online application, please visit http://www.krellinst.org/csgf.
Post-master's or Postdoctoral Research Positions Available in Computer Science
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory invites applications for Post-Graduate appointments of one year on the Scientific Software Team in the Computer Science Research Group of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division. The successful applicant will contribute to the development of an integrated environment for modeling and simulation that covers many areas of computational science. These areas include:
Batteries, Nuclear Reactors and Fuels, Plasma-facing components in fusion reactors
and Quantum Computer Simulations and Quantum Information. For more information, please visit http://bull.hn/l/UQQH/6.
Career Opportunities
Research Software Developer (2 Posts), - Ref:1290565
UCL Information Services Division -- Research IT Services
Application Deadline – November 25, 2012
UCL has recently founded a research software development team, working with researchers across college to ensure UCL retains the highest standards of excellence in computational science. We are recruiting two research software developers for the team. In this role, you will design, extend, refactor, and maintain scientific software across all subject areas. You will modify legacy software to run on state-of-the-art high performance computing infrastructure, provide expert software engineering consulting services to world-leading research teams, and work with researchers to build software to meet new research challenges. For more information, please visit https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?SID=amNvZGU9MTI5MDU2NSZ2dF90ZW1wbGF0ZT05NjUmb3duZXI9NTA0MTE3OCZvd25lcnR5cGU9ZmFpciZicmFuZF9pZD0wJmpvYl9yZWZfY29kZT0xMjkwNTY1JnBvc3RpbmdfY29kZT0yMjQmcmVxc2lnPTEzNTEyNDU0MDAtZWQ5N2EwNzcxNzNhYjk3YzllMDE4OWVhNjExNzlkNGM4MTQ1MjRmYw.
HPC System Admin
University of Michigan College of Engineering
The CAEN High-Performance Computing Systems Group provides production supercomputing cluster services and support to faculty in the College of Engineering. The incumbent in this position will install, integrate, maintain and support Linux in our 1000+ node HPC environment, including: system administration of HPC clusters and infrastructure; diagnosing, solving and implementing solutions for various system operational problems; tuning operating systems to increase performance and reliability of services; automating common processes when possible; interacting with vendors; communicating and collaborating with other groups, teams, projects and sites. For more information, please visit http://umjobs.org/job_detail/76182/os_programmer_intermediate.
Last But Not Least – Computational News of Interest
Artificial Intelligence, Powered by Many Humans
University of Rochester researchers have developed Chorus, an approach to virtual personal assistants that creates a smart artificial chat partner from small contributions from many crowdsourced workers. During testing, Chorus was asked for travel advice and the system showed that it could be smarter than any one individual in the crowd, because multiple people were contributing to its responses. "It shows how a crowd-powered system that is relatively simple can do something that [artificial intelligence] has struggled to do for decades," says Rochester professor Jeffrey Bigham. The researchers aimed to find a new way to increase the power of crowdsourcing, which is traditionally limited to simple, isolated tasks. "What we're really interested in is when a crowd as a collective can do better than even a high-quality individual," Bigham says. To read further, please visit http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429118/artificial-intelligence-powered-by-many-humans/#.
Cheetah Robot 'Runs Faster Than Usain Bolt'
Boston Dynamics, with support from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has developed Cheetah, a robot that recently set a new world record for legged robots, reaching 28.3 miles per hour. In comparison, current 100-meter dash world record holder Usain Bolt's top speed is 27.78 miles per hour. DARPA says the goal of the Cheetah project is to "more efficiently assist war fighters across a greater range of missions." The robot is powered by a hydraulic pump, and it passed an earlier record of 18 miles per hour recorded in February. "The Cheetah had a slight advantage over Bolt as it ran on a treadmill, but most of the power Cheetah used was to swing and lift its legs fast enough, not to propel itself forward," DARPA says. DARPA program manager Gill Pratt notes "our Cheetah bot borrows ideas from nature's design to inform stride patterns, flexing and unflexing of parts like the back, placement of limbs, and stability. What we gain through Cheetah and related research efforts are technological building blocks that create possibilities for a whole range of robots suited to future Department of Defense missions." To read further, please visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19506130.
