I attended two very interesting tutorials Sunday and Monday.

On Sunday, I went to the Containers session, which gave a great overview over Container technologies like Docker, Shifter, and a little on Singularity. Then there was a detailed tutorial on Docker/Shifter, which was interesting, but personally I would’ve been more interested in Singularity, since that’s the one we actually use for our High Energy Physics jobs.

On Monday, there was a very informative tutorial on how to purchase HPC resources, detailing the entire process from the first stages of planning the RFP all the way to bringing the cluster into production. The speakers were very knowledgeable, and quite entertaining as well.

I’m very grateful for the opportunity to go to all these sessions with the full workshop and tutorial passes I got — not to forget the free and quite good food at the tutorial lunches Sunday and Monday. 😉

The two plenary sessions on Monday evening and Tuesday …

UbuntuHouse@SC18 blogger Noxolo Moyake describes her Dallas debut and SC18 with amusing anecdotes! We are eager to experience this wonderful city through her eyes, and to learn which SC sessions interest her the most. Thanks, Nox!

Follow her SC18 blog!

Nox Moyake is a senior research marketer for the South African Center for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at the Centre for High Performance Computing in Cape Town. Moyake is a journalist, writer, editor and publications production specialist with more than seven years of experience in the HPC industry. She has hosted, organized and attended many workshops and international conferences. This year, she will blog about SC18 for STEM-Trek. 

Thank you sponsors and friends! 

UbuntuHouse@SC18 blogger Genito Maure shares a bit about his travel from Mozambique to Dallas, Texas-US. This is his fifth time in the US, but his first SC & Dallas rodeo!

Follow his SC18 blog!

When he’s not pursuing professional development opportunities, Genito supports the African HPC Ecosystems project on behalf of the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique.

Maure is skilled in numerical modeling and simulation of physical processes, statistical data analysis, fortran, high performance computing, shell scripting, climate change adaptation, and more. He earned a PhD in Environmental and Geographical Science from the University of Cape Town and currently works as a professor at UEM, the oldest and largest university in Mozambique that serves 40,000 students.

Watch UbuntuHouse@SC18 sponsors’ and friends’ websites to see what they will be doing at SC18!

by Dan Lorts (STEM-Trek Blogger and HPC Advocate)

Well Monday at SC18 started off in typical fashion; I arrived late, thanks to lovely Dallas traffic and the fact that everyone forgets how to drive when it’s raining.

I checked in after walking a ‘short’ distance, which at the Dallas Convention Center is a hike at times, and was greeted by a conference center employee who, because I was using my cane, took me straight to the front of the registration desk and promptly checked me in without any problems.

Then there was the first major decision everyone must make at SC18…which lanyard was I going to pick up and use for my badge? It is a  tough decision (not enough scientific data…). I picked up two; Micron and Cray since they were kind to support STEM-Trek’s SC delegation this year.

Another attendee was having the same difficulties and so I …

By Dan Lorts (STEM-Trek Blogger and HPC Advocate)

How about a behind the scenes look at what happens during the setup of a big conference like SC18?

It just so happens that I also work part-time for an event security company that is one of many providing services at SC18. This first group of pictures was taken during the second night of the setup. The floors were taped to identify the location of booths and placement of not only electrical connections but also the required data connections (Fig 1: show floor space map; cover image).

There were contractors running all over the place, including SciNet engineers who were setting up dNOCs and running the fiber connections per the above layout. The green Xes indicate completed booths; there were three additional sheets with booths in progress.

So, as you walk around or view pictures of the SC18 exhibit floor, remember how …

Elizabeth Leake (STEM-Trek) recently asked SC18 travel grant awardees (traveling to Dallas, Texas Nov. 9-16), “Shall we call our AirBnB South Fork or Ubuntu House?”

All she heard were crickets.

“Remember? J.R. Ewing was the lead character in the 1980’s teledrama, and South Fork was the name of his ranch.”

Again. Silence…

She began to realize this cohort was either too young to have known about the television series, Dallas, or grew up in places where it was never a ‘thing.’  They should consider themselves lucky to have avoided a decade of show-inspired “Texas Helmet Head” and massive shoulder pads. Seriously; we looked like linebackers!

So, Ubuntu House it is!

From Wikipedia: Ubuntu (Zulu pronunciation: [ùɓúntʼù])[1][2] is a Nguni Bantu term meaning “humanity.” It is often translated as …

Originally featured in TOP500 on June 26, 2018

The International Supercomputing Conference (ISC18) kicked off on Monday, June 25 in Frankfurt, Germany, with Maria Girone, Chief Technology Offier of CERN openlab delivering the opening keynote address. She explained how CERN’s needs will drive exascale computation and data science innovation in the future.

Founded in 1954, CERN straddles the Franco-Swiss border, and has an annual operating budget of one billion Swiss francs. With 22 member-states, its resources support 15,000 scientists around the world, and employs 2,500 at Swiss and French sites. CERN is home to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.

In addition to probing the fundamental structure of our universe, understanding the very first moments of our universe after the big bang, and searching for dark matter, CERN technicians and scientists are always developing new technologies for accelerators and detectors. Its instrumentation …

Dear Elizabeth,

First of all, thank you so much for finding a donor for my flight from Gaborone to Johannesburg. Please extend my gratitude to the wonderful people at South Africa’s Airlink Airlines!

Many thanks to ISC Marketing & Communications Manager Nages Sieslack, ISC Student Program Coordinator Colleen Sheedy and the ISC High Performance conference for the travel grant award! I appreciate STEM-Trek’s help covering up-front costs until ISC could make a reimbursement from my grant, and for the pocket euros. If not for everyone’s unwavering and collaborative support, it would have been difficult for me to attend the conference. People like you are rare, and worthy of being celebrated. You are my heroes!

My favorite part of the conference was the “Deep Learning Demystified” tutorial by NVIDIA and Leibniz Supercomputing Center. I was excited to experiment with Deep Learning models to do Object Detection on ocean shots, generate heat …

In this blog, Marcus Bond, an XSEDE Campus Champion and professor of inorganic chemistry and x-ray crystallography at Southeast Missouri State University, shares his experience at the International School of Crystallography at the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture in the mountaintop village of Erice, Sicily, June 1-10.

This crystallography school has been held annually since 1974. Program themes change each year, and there is usually a single topic. However, this year two distinctly different themes were presented simultaneously: Electron Crystallography and Quantum Crystallography. While attendees of both met jointly for a few lectures, each held separate sessons and workshops. Everybody came together informally for meals, social events, excursions …