HPC YEARBOOK 2021/22


NASA Earth System Observatory to help address climate change


NASA has announced an Earth System Observatory that will guide efforts related to climate change, disaster mitigation, fighting forest fires, and improving real-time agricultural processes. NASA will design a new set of Earth-focused missions to provide key information to guide efforts related to climate change, disaster mitigation, fighting forest fires, and improving real- time agricultural processes using the observatory. Each satellite from this new


observatory will be uniquely designed to complement the others, working in tandem to create a 3D, holistic view of Earth, from bedrock to the atmosphere. NASA administrator Senator Bill


Nelson commented: ‘Over the past three decades, much of what we’ve learned about the Earth’s changing climate is built on NASA satellite observations and research. NASA’s new Earth System Observatory will expand that work, providing the world with an unprecedented understanding of our Earth’s climate system, arming us with next-generation data critical to mitigating climate change, and protecting our communities in the face of natural disasters.’ The observatory follows


recommendations from the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which lays out ambitious but critically necessary research and observation guidance. Areas of focus for the observatory


include; aerosols, cloud, convection, and precipitation, mass change, surface biology and geology, surface deformation and change. NASA is currently initiating the


formulation phase for the observatory. Among its first integrated parts is NASA’s partnership with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which brings together two different kinds of radar systems that can measure changes in Earth’s surface of less than half an inch.


34


New Zealand research infrastructure boosted by investment


A


$2.1 million investment announced by New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI)


will ensure the country’s national research computing platforms remain responsive and high-performing to power researchers’ data-centric and data-intensive research. The investment, a collaboration by


the University of Auckland, University of Otago, and Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, will double the performance and significantly extend the computational capabilities of the Mahuika High Performance Computing cluster.


Since Mahuika came online in 2018


as part of New Zealand’s last major national infrastructure investment, the number of users and scale of research on the HPC platform has grown nearly 50 per cent year on year. In the previous 12 months, the Mahuika and Maui clusters have seen record-setting usage and sustained demand over time. Nick Jones, director of NeSI, said:


‘What we’re seeing in the sector is a rapid uptake in software, tools, and technologies around computation – we’re lifting the scale and increasing the richness of the platform to keep pace with researchers exploring the frontiers of their science. No one party is capable of taking on that challenge alone, so this joint investment by NeSI Collaborators – the University of Auckland, the University of Otago and Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research – is the sector coming together to achieve scale and enable science.’ ‘New Zealand researchers are using


HPC and eScience to open doors for their contributions to leading-edge research on the global stage,’ adds Jones. ‘HPC continues to be recognised as a strategic national capability, from the hardware innovations through to the societal and science challenges it enables.’


This upgrade and extension of Mahuika brings together new tools


and technologies to keep pace with today’s increasing diversity of research drivers. These include growth in data, the complexity of models, and a spread of maturity across research communities. Mahuika’s additional capacity –


based on the class-leading AMD Milan architecture – will allow a wider range of research communities to adopt HPC approaches and build digital skills within their research teams. New NVIDIA HGX 80GB A100 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cards – building on previous investments and paired with specialised software and tools for machine learning – will support more analysis at scale. Expanded high-memory capabilities


will allow rapid simultaneous processing for faster results and insights. Also, all components are being designed with a reduced carbon footprint in mind. In addition to doubling Mahuika’s computing power, the new nodes are more than 2.5 times more power- efficient. The new equipment will be hosted in Wellington, at the national purpose-designed and built HPC facility of NIWA, another NeSI Collaborator. This investment also builds upon an ongoing partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which will work with NeSI engineers to bring the Mahuika extension’s technology design and architecture to life.


www.scientific-computing.com


NookHok/shutterstock


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