Tag Archives: innovation

SC18 brings supercomputing’s best and brightest to Dallas

Every November, thousands of researchers and industry representatives in high-performance computing and related fields, such as advanced networking, data storage, and data analysis, meet for the annual Supercomputing Conference (SC18) in Dallas, Texas, to learn about HPC and scientific applications and innovations from around the world.

SC18 marks the 30th Anniversary of the SC Conference Series, and hasn’t been back in Dallas for 18 years. This year’s event, with the theme “HPC Inspires” is set for Nov. 11-16 at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas. Exhibits will be on display Nov. 12-15.

HPC Inspires

Imagine the possibilities. Unlike any time in history, HPC allows us to analyze many points of data to make groundbreaking discoveries in all fields of inquiry, connecting humanity to the world around us as never before.

What is SCinet?

SCinet is a truly special collaboration among more than 180 highly-skilled volunteers from about 80 domestic and international organizations. All donate their time, energy, and unique skills to the overall success of the conference, with the generous support of their home institutions.

SCinet Chair Jason Zurawski is a Science Engagement Engineer at the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) headquartered and managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. ESnet is the U.S. Department of Energy’s high-performance networking facility. In 2004, while Jason was a computer science graduate student, he volunteered to plan, build and operate SCinet, the SC Conference’s dedicated high-capacity network. SCinet supplies exhibitors with high-capacity feeds to run all their applications in addition to providing high-speed WiFi to more than 10,000 attendees. It is a giant task and requires the best in the business to create and manage it. Read more from Jason in this blog.

Quilt Members once again have joined many from the international supercomputing community to play an integral part of the annual event through demonstrations, booths, presentations and the building of SCinet. Those include: Great Plains Network (Booth 1035); Louisiana State University (Booth 1816); University of Utah (1828); Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (2028); NCAR (Booth 2000); Indiana University (Booth 2400); Ohio Supercomputing Center (Booth 3037); Starlight (Booth 2851); and Pacific Wave (Booth 3158), just to name a few.

Another Win for WINS

Five women IT professionals have been selected to participate in the “Women in IT Networking at SC” (WINS) inclusivity program at SC18. They will join peers from around the globe to help build and operate SCinet.

This year’s WINS participants are:

  • Brenna Meade, telecom analyst at the University of Denver in Colorado
  • Erika Kindlimann, network security engineer at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan
  • Jessa Westclark, network specialist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Kalina Dunn, network engineer at GlobalNOC at Indiana University
  • Loren Adams, network engineer at Georgia State University in Atlanta

In recognition for its work to provide professional development opportunities to highly-qualified women in the networking field, the WINS program received the 2017 Innovations in Networking Award for Experimental Applications presented by Quilt Member, CENIC. Read more about it.

This year’s WINS review committee was led by Wendy Huntoon of KINBER and included Carrie Gates of Securelytix, Eli Dart of ESnet, Dave Jent of GlobalNOC and the Quilt, John Kolb of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Amy Philipson of Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and Linda Winkler of Argonne National Laboratory.

WINS is funded by the NSF and the Department of Energy. It was initiated in 2015 as joint effort between ESnet, the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and SCinet.

As of 2018, WINS has funded 24 women to participate in SCinet.

Staying in the Loop

Real-time event conversations can be found @Supercomputing on Twitter or using #SC18.

If you or others from Quilt Member institutions plan to attend SC18, we would like to hear from you and your experience for a future blog. Please contact us or Tweet us @TweetTheQuilt.

 

Humans and technology intersect at NRP Workshop

The first National Research Platform (NRP) Workshop is happening next month and The Quilt is excited and looking forward to discussing and learning more about our potential role in developing a national big data superhighway.

The NRP workshop will be held at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8. The purpose is to bring together representatives from interested institutions to discuss implementation strategies for deployment of interoperable Science DMZs at a national scale. This workshop is sponsored by the National Science Foundation through the Pacific Research Platform and Montana State University, and CENIC.

The National Science Foundation funded a 5-year cooperative agreement for the Pacific Research Platform (PRP) to improve the end-to-end, high-speed networking data transfer capabilities in collaborative, big-data science among 20 institutions. As part of the PRP cooperative agreement, NSF requires that the ensemble of PRP technologies be extensible across other scientific domains and to other regional and national networks. In response to this requirement, the NRP Workshop will solicit input from many multi-state networking organizations (Internet2, The Quilt, ESnet and others) on how the PRP model might further blossom.

Sessions will be devoted to science-driver application researchers describing their needs for high-speed data transfer, including their successes and frustrations. Discussions will focus on requirements from the domain scientists and the networking architecture, policies, tools and security necessary to deploy a 200-institution National Research Platform. All participants will be encouraged to ask questions and share their thoughts during these discussions. View the impressive line-up of speakers and experts.

The NRP is committed to facilitating the necessary social engineering among a diverse group of science, R&E network and IT leaders as well as provide proven end-to-end networking. An effective national partnership will need cyberinfrastructure experts working with scientists at their interface and understanding the desired scientific outcomes, rather than viewing the technology as an end to itself. Identifying common functionality that can be leveraged between science applications to make the NRP partnership more efficient and effective and prioritize high-performance access to supercomputer centers is key.

Registration has closed as the event is at capacity. For information about future workshops or the latest PRP research, please join the PRP listserv. Any other questions, visit the FAQ section on the event website.

UEN, Quilt Members converge in Utah for SC16 Conference

Every November, thousands of researchers and industry representatives in high-performance computing and related fields, such as advanced networking, data storage, and data analysis, meet for the annual Supercomputing Conference (SC16) to learn about HPC and scientific applications and innovations from around the world.

This year’s conference, with the theme “HPC Matters,” took place Nov. 13-18 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This annual event previously was held in Salt Lake City in 2012.

Quilt Members once again were an integral part of the annual event through demonstrations, booths, presentations and building SCinet. Quilt members joined many from the international supercomputing community, essentially a gathering of scientists, engineers, researchers, educators, programmers, system administrators and developers that is unequaled in the world.

The internationally-recognized technical program included presentations, papers, informative tutorials, timely research posters and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. A 515,000 square-foot exhibition hall featured the latest technologies and accomplishments from the world’s leading vendors, research organizations and universities, offering the first opportunity for attendees to learn about the technologies that will shape the future of large-scale technical computing and data-driven science.

The Salt Palace Convention Center during the event also turned into the home to the fastest, most innovative computer network in the world during SC16 conference.  SCinet, the high-performance, experimental network built specifically for the conference, offers an unprecedented amount of bandwidth within the conference exhibit hall and connecting the convention center to the broader Internet.

Partnering with Quilt Member Utah Education Network (UEN) and CenturyLink, SCinet provided more than 5 Tbps of internal network bandwidth, along with tens of 100 Gbps Ethernet circuits to bring 3.15 Tbps of Wide Area Network bandwidth to the convention center. UEN guided this collaboration with national and international research and education networks and commodity Internet providers. More than 12,000 conference exhibitors and attendees relied on SCinet during SC16.

Listen to the UEN podcast on how Corby Schmitz and Gyongyi Horvath prepare for SC16.

If you or others from Quilt Member Institutions attended SC16, we would like to hear from you and your experience for a future blog. Please contact us or Tweet us @TweetTheQuilt.

The Quilt to present on CC*IIE at Internet2 Global Summit

The 2015 Internet2 Global Summit is being held through Thursday at the Renaissance Washington D.C. Downtown Hotel. Building on the success of the 2014 event, the theme for this year is “Community: Leading the way.”

The Quilt will lead a panel discussion on Wednesday geared towards R&E networks on Advanced Networking: Regional Collaboration Through its Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Infrastructure, Innovation and Engineering (CC*IIE) program.

The National Science Foundation funded five R&E networks for regional collaboration projects. These projects will disseminate information regarding advanced networking techniques, build bridges to distributed science communities, and share insights into technology options that can be tailored to solve advanced networking challenges faced by science collaborators and projects.

This session scheduled from 3 to 4 p.m. EDT in The Grand Ballroom will be available live online via Netcast.

Regional network representatives will showcase several of these innovative projects to demonstrate the key role of the regional networks in fostering collaboration among member institutions. Followed by this overview, the group will turn to a specific example of how the long history of collaboration and innovation among Ohio’s regional network community fostered by OARnet has been an engine in the success of several of its members receiving NSF CC*NIE/CC*IIE awards.

The scheduled panelists to be featured include Paul Schopis from Quilt Member OARnet; Marla Meehl UCAR / NCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research); James von Oehsen of Clemson University; Thomas Skill of the University of Dayton; Roger Bielefeld Case Western Reserve University; Bruce Burton of the University of Cincinnati; Claude Garelik from the South Dakota Board of Regents; and Patricia Campbell from Quilt Member KINBER. The panel will be moderated by The Quilt President and CEO Jen Leasure.

“These awards were achieved through mutual support among constituents and the collaborative spirit of our R&E networking community. I’m looking forward to the discussion on Wednesday as we examine these projects more closely,” said Leasure.

The Global Summit is Internet2’s annual meeting that showcases how the R&E community is transforming the way networking is conceived and conducted. The 2015 meeting will focus on the advancement of research and education capabilities through collaborative innovations in IT infrastructure and applications and will feature keynote addresses from top R&E leaders, presentations from noted experts, and sessions focused on partnerships and advanced technologies. Internet2 Network Services also will give updates on efforts related to operational excellence, planning for the next iteration of the Internet2 Network, and a new security effort.

Most, if not all, plenary sessions will be available through live streaming online.