HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
facilitate the transition into using larger HPC systems. While it aims specifically at SMEs, it does provide an opportunity for companies to develop skills with HPC. Tier-2 is where you have the SHAPE
programme, which introduces a company to the benefits of HPC. Once a company has graduated from the SHAPE programme, they might be able to use their local national Tier-1 systems and then move up to Tier-0, so it is positive in the way that it opens up the ecosystem and gets industry to think about the way they can access HPC resources,’ said Margetts. ‘This brings the other parts of the
g ‘Naturally, when PRACE said they want
to engage with industry and increase the number of proposals in 2013, there was an increase but as companies face rejection after rejection, they become less motivated to apply again,’ said Margetts. ‘The idea is to give industry a chance by having their proposals ranked against each other, rather than a visualisation of a black hole. ‘This new approach coupled with the
allocation of core hours, specifically for industrial users, will give new opportunities to them. This will help to give confidence to applying firms, as their projects will be appraised more favourably in the current open call, and future calls for projects.’
Providing a path to Tier-0 Another challenge facing the PRACE organisation is helping to facilitate industrial users in their journey to using Tier-0 HPC resources. While some may argue that most industrial users – outside of aerospace and large automotive companies – do not need Tier-0 computing resources, this argument could have been used in the same way when looking at academic users. Tier-0 resources are the largest and most powerful HPC systems. Due to the sheer scale and complexity of scaling code to thousands of nodes, there is some difficulty, particularly for new users. If you have never used a Tier-1 or Tier-2 system, then it stands to reason that you would not have the kind of skills and experience to deliver code that can scale effectively on a Tier-0 machine. To combat this for scientific research,
PRACE has developed an infrastructure to help users develop their skills as they progress through the tiers. An academic
14 Scientific Computing World August/September 2019
“The argument from the IAC is that every part of the scientific ecosystem, either needs to be available for industry users, or there needs to be a parallel set of services that help industry”
user, for example, may start at a local cluster where they develop their code on a local academic cluster at their university before moving up to national resources. Once the researchers have gained the relevant skills and shown that their code can scale sufficiently, they can apply to use Tier-0 resources from PRACE. To support these users there is a clear
pathway alongside PRACE training centres to get users from Tier-2 to Tier-1. Once that has been accomplished, there is more support in the form of High Level Support Teams - such as the one at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), which can help scientists further refine their code in preparation for the use of Tier-0. ‘The argument from the IAC is that every
part of the scientific ecosystem either needs to be available for industry users, or there needs to be a parallel set of services that help industry,’ said Margetts.
If you build it, they will come Support for industrial users is increasing fast. The SME HPC Adoption Programme in Europe (SHAPE) initiative is an example of work being done by PRACE to help
ecosystem into the limelight, because in order to use the PRACE Tier-0, you need to show that your code scales on a system. There is another access mechanism to do that, which is preparatory access,’ he added.
The objective of preparatory access
is to allow PRACE users to optimise, scale and test codes on PRACE Tier-0 systems before applying to PRACE calls. Production runs are not allowed as part of PRACE Preparatory Access but can help to develop the necessary skills and give confidence that a particular code will run at the scale needed to make the most of a Tier-0 system. The SHAPE programme has already helped around 60 companies but the legacy of this and the other programmes are not only the work that has been done through these projects. PRACE is helping change the mindset around the industrial use of HPC.
Opening up the use of large-scale HPC
resources to industry users is not an easy task but, by doing so, PRACE is proving that there are companies out there that not only have challenges that require HPC, but those industry users are more than capable of making use of the top echelon of HPC systems in Europe. While it may take some time before the
use of HPC is as widespread in industry as it is in the scientific community, this work must be done in order to let European industry compete on a truly global level. The skills that are developed and the technology transfer will help to drive these companies forward for years to come. ‘There are a lot of problems in society at the moment. We have a lack of antibiotics, a need for clean energy, issues with climate change and a big issue with plastic waste. For me, these investments in infrastructure benefit the European citizen and the pathway for that is having a good relationship between scientists and people in companies,’ concluded Margetts.
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