US-Africa High Performance Computing Workshop: TACC Ranger Lives On

美非高性能计算研讨会：TACC Ranger 永存

• 批准号: 1450553
• 负责人: Tommy Minyard
• 金额: $ 4.91万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-15 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1450553&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: US; Africa; Performance; Computing; Workshop

This workshop will enhance the potential for U.S. scientists to collaborate with African colleagues on a wide range of data-intensive projects by helping African scientists improve local supercomputing capacity. The workshop will be organized and managed by Tommy Minyard, Director of Advanced Computing Systems at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) of the University of Texas and Austin, and will build upon the 2013 donation to three African countries of almost 2000 compute nodes from the decommissioned ?Ranger? supercomputer, which was itself funded by NSF. The 2013 donation of Ranger computing components to institutions in Botswana, Tanzania, and South Africa was funded independently by the University of Texas. This workshop will help ensure that the African scientists who received this computing infrastructure have the skills and information necessary to use this resource to advance discoveries in astronomy, agriculture, climatology, earth sciences, transportation, telecommunications and many more fields of study that are of interest and value to the U.S. and Africa. TACC will organize a series of training and information exchange events to support broader understanding and use of supercomputing in Africa and to build a foundation for US-Africa collaborative research projects. In November 2014 approximately eight African researchers will visit TACC following their attendance at the SuperComputing Conference in New Orleans. The Austin visit will allow demonstration of a broad range of applications and tools that will enhance the African scientists? understanding and ability to facilitate the second phase of the workshop in South Africa. In addition visiting Austin will allow the African scientists to meet and discuss potential collaboration with several U.S. researchers using supercomputing to study topics in or relevant to southern Africa. In December 2014 the South African Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) will host a second, much larger workshop activity. The December 2014 event will follow the annual South African Supercomputing Conference hosted by CHPC and participants from this conference will be invited to attend the subsequent workshop. Six TACC staff members will travel to South Africa to conduct three-days of intensive discussions and trainings on configuring servers into single clusters and installing and using appropriate open source applications for a range of research activities. TACC staff will also discuss the emerging multi-national African high performance computing (HPC) development plan with their African colleagues. The enhancement of HPC capacity in Africa is likely to produce near term benefits to two specific NSF-supported global activities: the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and the iPlant Collaborative. The internationally-funded SKA will be locating instruments and data processing equipment within South Africa and the CHPC will be supporting the computational requirements of this instrument, which will produce data for researchers in the United States and around the world. The NSF-funded iPlant project works with the Gates Foundation International Breeding Platform (IBP) to share computationally based molecular breeding tools for staple food crops within Africa. The TACC-provided infrastructure and training will help HPC Centers in Tanzania and South Africa to locally host the tools and data necessary to improve productivity in staple crops in Africa. The datasets produced will be shared around the globe, providing rich comparative datasets to U.S. plant science researchers, whose research is often limited to the strains of crops used for food production in the U.S. and further limited by data held privately by Agribusiness firms.The primary broader impact of this activity will be spurring interest and skills in high performance computing that will encourage students to learn to build and manage cluster computing resources and help scientists to understand how they can use HPC to power discoveries that change the world. New collaborations between researchers and their students in the U.S. and Africa are likely to develop as African capacity for data processing improves and based on the meetings that this workshop supports. In addition, improvements in HPC have the potential to improve both computer-focused education and science education in these three African countries.This project is co-funded by International Science and Engineering in the Office of the Director and Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

该研讨会将通过帮助非洲科学家提高当地超级计算能力，增强美国科学家与非洲同事在广泛的数据密集型项目上合作的潜力。该研讨会将由德克萨斯大学和奥斯汀分校德克萨斯高级计算中心（TACC）高级计算系统主任Tommy Minyard组织和管理，并将建立在2013年向三个非洲国家捐赠的近2000个计算节点的基础上。护林员？超级计算机，它本身由NSF资助。2013年向博茨瓦纳、坦桑尼亚和南非的机构捐赠的Ranger计算组件由德克萨斯大学独立资助。该研讨会将有助于确保获得该计算基础设施的非洲科学家拥有必要的技能和信息，以使用该资源来推进天文学，农业，气候学，地球科学，运输，电信以及美国和非洲感兴趣和有价值的更多研究领域的发现。TACC将组织一系列培训和信息交流活动，以支持非洲更广泛地理解和使用超级计算，并为美非合作研究项目奠定基础。2014年11月，大约8名非洲研究人员将在参加新奥尔良超级计算会议后访问TACC。奥斯汀访问将允许展示广泛的应用和工具，将提高非洲科学家？在南非举办的第二阶段讲习班上，此外，访问奥斯汀将使非洲科学家能够与几位美国研究人员会面并讨论潜在的合作，这些研究人员使用超级计算来研究南部非洲或与南部非洲相关的主题。2014年12月，南非高性能计算中心（CHPC）将举办第二次规模更大的研讨会活动。2014年12月的活动将在CHPC主办的年度南非超级计算会议之后举行，本次会议的与会者将被邀请参加随后的研讨会。六名TACC工作人员将前往南非进行为期三天的密集讨论和培训，内容涉及将服务器配置为单个集群，以及为一系列研究活动安装和使用适当的开源应用程序。TACC工作人员还将与非洲同事讨论新兴的多国非洲高性能计算（HPC）发展计划。非洲高性能计算能力的提高可能会给国家科学基金会支持的两项具体全球活动带来短期效益：平方公里阵列（SKA）和iPlant协作。国际资助的SKA将在南非境内部署仪器和数据处理设备，CHPC将支持该仪器的计算要求，该仪器将为美国和世界各地的研究人员提供数据。NSF资助的iPlant项目与盖茨基金会国际育种平台（IBP）合作，在非洲分享基于计算的主食作物分子育种工具。TACC提供的基础设施和培训将帮助坦桑尼亚和南非的HPC中心在当地托管提高非洲主要作物生产力所需的工具和数据。产生的数据集将在地球仪上共享，为美国植物科学研究人员提供丰富的比较数据集，其研究通常仅限于美国用于食品生产的作物品种，并进一步受到农业企业私人持有的数据的限制。这项活动的主要广泛影响将是激发对高性能计算的兴趣和技能，这将鼓励学生学习构建和管理群集计算资源，并帮助科学家了解如何使用HPC来推动改变世界的发现。随着非洲数据处理能力的提高，并基于本次研讨会支持的会议，美国和非洲研究人员及其学生之间的新合作可能会发展。此外，HPC的改进有可能改善这三个非洲国家的计算机教育和科学教育，该项目由主任办公室的国际科学与工程和计算机与信息科学与工程局的高级网络基础设施共同资助。