The session began with a welcome and introduction by Mateo Valero (BSC), one of the main drivers of this cooperation and a leading name in the field of HPC. This intervention was later complemented by Fabrizio Gagliardi (BSC). Afterward, Elsa Carvalho (INESC TEC) presented the work done in terms of communication by the RISC2 team, an important segment for all the news and achievements to reach all the partners and countries involved.

Carlos J. Barrios Hernandez then presented the work done within the HPC Observatory, a relevant source of information that European and Latin American research organizations can address with HPC and/or AI issues.

The session closed with an important and pertinent debate on how to strengthen cooperation in HPC between the European Union and Latin America, in which all participants contributed and gave their opinion, committing to efforts so that the work developed within the framework of RISC2 is continued.

What our partners had to say about the meeting?

Rafael Mayo Garcia, CIEMAT:

“The policy event organized by RISC2 in Brussels was of utmost importance for the development of HPC and digital capabilities for a shared infrastructure between EU and LAC. Even more, it has had crucial contributions to international entities such as CYTED, the Ibero-American Programme for the Development of Science and Technology. On the CIEMAT side, it has been a new step beyond for building and participating in a HPC shared ecosystem.”

Esteban Meneses, CeNAT:

“In Costa Rica, CeNAT plays a critical role in fostering technological change. To achieve that goal, it is fundamental to synchronize our efforts with other key players, particularly government institutions. The event policy in Brussels was a great opportunity to get closer to our science and technology ministry and start a dialogue on the importance of HPC, data science, and artificial intelligence for bringing about the societal changes we aim for.”

Esteban Mocskos, UBA:

“The Policy Event recently held in Brussels and organized by the RISC2 project had several remarkable points. The gathering of experts in HPC research and management in Latin America and Europe served to plan the next steps in the joint endeavor to deepen the collaboration in this field. The advance in management policies, application optimization, and user engagement are fundamental topics treated during the main sessions and also during the point-to-point talks in every corner of the meeting room.
I can say that this meeting will also spawn different paths in these collaboration efforts that we’ll surely see their results during the following years with a positive impact on both sides of this fruitful relationship: Latin America and Europe.”

Sergio Nesmachnow, Universidad de la República:

“The National Supercomputing Center (Uruguay) and Universidad de la República have led the development of HPC strategies and technologies and their application to relevant problems in Uruguay. Specific meetings such as the policy event organized by RISC2 in Brussels are key to present and disseminate the current developments and achievements to relevant political and technological leaders in our country, so that they gain knowledge about the usefulness of HPC technologies and infrastructure to foster the development of national scientific research in capital areas such as sustainability, energy, and social development. It was very important to present the network of collaborators in Latin America and Europe and to show the involvement of institutional and government agencies.

Within the contacts and talks during the organization of the meeting, we introduced the projecto to national authorities, including the National Director of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education and Culture, and the President of the National Agency for Research and Innovation, as well as the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation and academic authorities from all institutions involved in the National Supercomputing Center initiative. We hope the established contacts can result in productive joint efforts to foster the development of HPC and related scientific areas in our country and the region.”

Carla Osthoff, LNCC:

“In Brazil, LNCC is critical in providing High Performance Computing Resources for the Research Community and training Human Resources and fostering new technologies. The policy event organized by RISC2 in Brussels was fundamental to synchronizing LNCC efforts with other government institutions and international  entities. On the LNCC side, it has been a new step beyond building and participating in an HPC-shared ecosystem.

Specific meetings such as the policy event organized by RISC2 in Brussels  were very important to present the network of collaborators in Latin America and Europe and to show the involvement of institutional and government agencies.

As a result of joint activities in research and development in the areas of information and communication technologies (ICT), artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, and computational modelling, with emphasis on the areas of scientific computing and data science, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) have been signed between LNCC and Inria/France. As a  result of new joint activities, LNCC and INESC TEC/Portugal are starting  collaboration through INESC TEC International Visiting Researcher Programme 2023.”

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The ENERXICO Project focused on developing advanced simulation software solutions for oil & gas, wind energy and transportation powertrain industries.  The institutions that collaborated in the project are for México: ININ (Institution responsible for México), Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN (Cinvestav), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM IINGEN, FCUNAM), Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco, Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN) and Pemex, and for the European Union: Centro de Supercómputo de Barcelona (Institution responsible for the EU), Technische Universitäts München, Alemania (TUM), Universidad de Grenoble Alpes, Francia (UGA), CIEMAT, España, Repsol, Iberdrola, Bull, Francia e Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, España.  

The Project contemplated four working packages (WP): 

WP1 Exascale Enabling: This was a cross-cutting work package that focused on assessing performance bottlenecks and improving the efficiency of the HPC codes proposed in vertical WP (UE Coordinator: BULL, MEX Coordinator: CINVESTAV-COMPUTACIÓN); 

WP2 Renewable energies:  This WP deployed new applications required to design, optimize and forecast the production of wind farms (UE Coordinator: IBR, MEX Coordinator: ININ); 

WP3 Oil and gas energies: This WP addressed the impact of HPC on the entire oil industry chain (UE Coordinator: REPSOL, MEX Coordinator: ININ); 

WP4 Biofuels for transport: This WP displayed advanced numerical simulations of biofuels under conditions similar to those of an engine (UE Coordinator: UPV-CMT, MEX Coordinator: UNAM); 

For WP1 the following codes were optimized for exascale computers: Alya, Bsit, DualSPHysics, ExaHyPE, Seossol, SEM46 and WRF.   

As an example, we present some of the results for the DualPHYysics code. We evaluated two architectures: The first set of hardware used were identical nodes, each equipped with 2 ”Intel Xeon Gold 6248 Processors”, clocking at 2.5 GHz with about 192 GB of system memory. Each node contained 4 Nvidia V100 Tesla GPUs with 32 GB of main memory each. The second set of hardware used were identical nodes, each equipped with 2 ”AMD Milan 7763 Processors”, clocking at 2.45 GHz with about 512 GB of system memory. Each node contained 4 Nvidia V100 Ampere GPUs with 40 GB of main memory each. The code was compiled and linked with CUDA 10.2 and OpenMPI 4. The application was executed using one GPU per MPI rank. 

In Figures 1 and 2 we show the scalability of the code for the strong and weak scaling tests that indicate that the scaling is very good. Motivated by these excellent results, we are in the process of performing in the LUMI supercomputer new SPH simulations with up to 26,834 million particles that will be run with up to 500 GPUs, which is 53.7 million particles per GPU. These simulations will be done initially for a Wave Energy Converter (WEC) Farm (see Figure 3), and later for turbulent models. 

Figure 1. Strong scaling test with a fix number of particles but increasing number of GPUs.

Figure 2. Weak scaling test with increasing number of particles and GPUs.

Figure 3. Wave Energy Converter (WEC) Farm (taken from https://corpowerocean.com/)

As part of WP3, ENERXICO developed a first version of a computer code called Black Hole (or BH code) for the numerical simulation of oil reservoirs, based on the numerical technique known as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics or SPH. This new code is an extension of the DualSPHysics code (https://dual.sphysics.org/) and is the first SPH based code that has been developed for the numerical simulation of oil reservoirs and has important benefits versus commercial codes based on other numerical techniques.  

The BH code is a large-scale massively parallel reservoir simulator capable of performing simulations with billions of “particles” or fluid elements that represent the system under study. It contains improved multi-physics modules that automatically combine the effects of interrelated physical and chemical phenomena to accurately simulate in-situ recovery processes. This has led to the development of a graphical user interface, considered as a multiple-platform application for code execution and visualization, and for carrying out simulations with data provided by industrial partners and performing comparisons with available commercial packages.  

Furthermore, a considerable effort is presently being made to simplify the process of setting up the input for reservoir simulations from exploration data by means of a workflow fully integrated in our industrial partners’ software environment.  A crucial part of the numerical simulations is the equation of state.  We have developed an equation of state based on crude oil data (the so-called PVT) in two forms, the first as a subroutine that is integrated into the code, and the second as an interpolation subroutine of properties’ tables that are generated from the equation of state subroutine.  

An oil reservoir is composed of a porous medium with a multiphase fluid made of oil, gas, rock and other solids. The aim of the code is to simulate fluid flow in a porous medium, as well as the behaviour of the system at different pressures and temperatures.  The tool should allow the reduction of uncertainties in the predictions that are carried out. For example, it may answer questions about the benefits of injecting a solvent, which could be CO2, nitrogen, combustion gases, methane, etc. into a reservoir, and the times of eruption of the gases in the production wells. With these estimates, it can take the necessary measures to mitigate their presence, calculate the expense, the pressure to be injected, the injection volumes and most importantly, where and for how long. The same happens with more complex processes such as those where fluids, air or steam are injected, which interact with the rock, oil, water and gas present in the reservoir. The simulator should be capable of monitoring and preparing measurement plans. 

In order to be able to perform a simulation of a reservoir oil field, an initial model needs to be created.  Using geophysical forward and inverse numerical techniques, the ENERXICO project evaluated novel, high-performance simulation packages for challenging seismic exploration cases that are characterized by extreme geometric complexity. Now, we are undergoing an exploration of high-order methods based upon fully unstructured tetrahedral meshes and also tree-structured Cartesian meshes with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) for better spatial resolution. Using this methodology, our packages (and some commercial packages) together with seismic and geophysical data of naturally fractured reservoir oil fields, are able to create the geometry (see Figure 4), and exhibit basic properties of the oil reservoir field we want to study.  A number of numerical simulations are performed and from these oil fields exploitation scenarios are generated.

Figure 4. A detail of the initial model for a SPH simulation of a porous medium.

More information about the ENERXICO Project can be found in: https://enerxico-project.eu/

By: Jaime Klapp (ININ, México) and Isidoro Gitler (Cinvestav, México)

The post Subsequent Progress And Challenges Concerning The México-UE Project ENERXICO: Supercomputing And Energy For México first appeared on RISC2 Project.

The NLHPC staff  set their  fundamental pillar to focus  efforts on the scientific community and show HPC as an essential tool for country development by getting users from diverging scientific areas, industry and public sector. This entails breaking access barriers to this kind of technology. NLHPC faces this challenge by making training for the basic use of HPC  and scientific software optimization;  which is key in order to make a good use of resources.

The training was carried out within a framework of computational thinking, being the process by which an individual, through his professional experience and acquired knowledge, manages to face problems of different kinds. This could be evidenced in our active participation in the resolution of the proposed activities, which enhanced our abstraction and engineering thinking. We will certainly take this vision of education and collaborative work to our professional environment, in the different roles we play as HPC administrators, teachers and students.

The proper use of computing services involves efforts to perform monitoring, control and infrastructure management tasks. With the help of the tools reviewed during our visit, we will be able to provide our users with the highest standards of quality, security and accessibility.

The joint effort of the RISC2 and EU-CELAC ResInfra projects made it possible for engineers from Colombia, Mexico and Peru to participate in this HPC management course, learn about Chilean culture, gain knowledge and valuable contacts for our profession.

After living this great experience, we hope that in the near future other supercomputing centers replicate this type of initiatives in other parts of the world, thus increasing the communication bridges between HPC administrators from different places, sharing knowledge and experiences.

We are left with the milestone of being part of the First School of HPC Administrators of Latin America and the Caribbean, with experiences that made us grow in professional, academic, and human aspects. As well as with alliances among colleagues and now friends, a network of support as brothers of the same region.

We conclude by thanking Rafael Mayo of CIEMAT for the initiative; Ginés Guerrero, Pedro Schürmann, Eugenio Guerra, Pablo Flores, Angelo Guajardo, Esteban Osorio, José Morales for the knowledge and experiences shared; RISC2 and EU-CELAC ResInfra for providing us with this learning opportunity, supporting the scholarship grant.

By:

Miguel Angel Barrera Arbelaez, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Carlos Enrique Mosquera Trujillo, Centro de bioinformática y biología computacional de Colombia BIOS, Colombia

César Alexander Bernal Díaz, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia.

Eduardo Romero Arzate, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México.

Ronald Darwin Apaza Veliz, Universidad Nacional de San Agustín, Perú.

Joel Gonzalez Lara, Centro de Análisis de Datos y Supercómputo, México

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The workshop aimed to exchange experiences, results, and best practices of collaboration initiatives between Europe and Latin America, in which HPC was essential, and to discuss how to work towards sustainability by reinforcing the bridges between the HPC communities in both regions. The workshop was organized by our partners Esteban Meneses from CeNAT, Fabrizio Gagliardi from BSC, Bernd Mohr from JSC, Carlos J. Barrios H. from UIS, and Rafael Mayo-Gacía from CIEMAT.

The workshop was opened with a keynote by Daniele Lezzi from BSC who reviewed the EU-LATAM collaboration on HPC. Six more presentations highlighted research work from Latin America and collaborative work between organizations on both continents. More information about the workshop including a detailed program can be found here.

The RISC2 project supported the IEEE Cluster Conference, a major international forum for presenting and sharing recent accomplishments and technological developments in the field of cluster computing, as well as the use of cluster systems for scientific and commercial applications by organizing a networking event at the end of the workshop day.

Our partner Esteban Meneses, from National High Technology Center in Costa Rica and one of the RISC2 partners, was one of the Publicity Co-Chairs of the IEEE Cluster 2022 Conference.

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In accordance with all of the above, it seems appropriate to consider the launch of coordination actions between both domains at both the European and Latin American levels to support the development of adjusted data models and simulation codes for energy thematic areas, while making use of the latest technology in HPC.

With different countries and regions in the world trying to win the race for the development of the most efficient Computing and Artificial Intelligence technology, it seems equally logical to support the development of high-performance computing research infrastructure. Scientific communities can now access the most powerful computing resources and use them to run simulations focused on energy challenges. Simulation enables planning and working towards tomorrow’s clean energy sources in a digital framework, greatly reducing prototyping costs and waste.

As examples, there are several fields in which the advances that the exploitation of digital methodologies (HPC jointly with data science and artificial intelligence) can bring will produce the resolution of more ambitious problems in the energy sector:

• Improvement in the exploitation of energy sources
  • Weather forecast or turbines in off-and on-shore wind energy
  • Design of new devices such as wind turbines, solar thermal plants, collectors, solid state batteries, etc
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of heat transfer between solar radiation, materials, and fluids
• Design of advanced materials of energy interest
  • Materials for innovative batteries via accurate molecular dynamics and/or ab initio simulations to design and characterize at the atomic-scale new cathodes and electrolytes
  • Materials for photovoltaic devices via multiscale simulations where atomic-scale ab-initio simulations are combined with mesoscale approaches to design efficient energy harvesting devices
• Energy distribution
  • Integrated energy system analysis, optimization of the energy mix and smart grids fed with renewable energies, and further distribution in the electricity grid
  • Economic energy models
  • Smart meters and sensor deployment and further application to energy efficiency in buildings, smart cities, etc Exploitation on additional infrastructures such as fog/edge computing
  • New actors (prosumers) in a distributed electricity market, including energy systems integration

Behind all the previous items, there is a solid track of research that forms the foundations of this effort in reinforcing research on digital topics. Some examples are:

• Design of Digitalized Intelligent Energy Systems, for example, their application to cities in which zero-emissions buildings or intelligent power systems are pursued
• Deeper understanding of the physics behind the energy sources, for example, multiscale simulation or of the atmospheric flow for wind farm operation through CFD–RANS or LES simulation coupled to mesoscale models taking advantage of the capabilities offered by exascale computing
• New designs of Fluids Structure Interactions (FSI), for example, for full rotor simulations coupled to Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. Structural dynamics (fatigue) in different devices
• Optimization of codes by the means of new mathematical kernels, not simply computational porting
• Integration of different computing platforms seamlessly combining HPC, HTC, and High-Performance Data Analytics methodologies

Moreover, the advanced modeling of energy systems is allowed thanks to the tight synergy with other disciplines from mathematics to computer science, from data science to numerical analysis. Among the other high-end modeling requires:

• Data Science, as handlina g large volume of data is key to energy-focused HPC and HTC simulations and data-driven workflow
• Designs customized machine and deep learning techniques for improved artificial intelligence approaches
• Efficient implementation of digital platforms, their interconnections and interoperability

By CIEMAT

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This first online workshop gathered 20 participants each day to discuss the main challenges for such a convergence and present ongoing related works.  The workshop also aimed to foster more focused cooperation between partners.

The event was moderated by Stéphane Lanteri, from Inria, and had the participation of Daniele Lezzi, from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, António Tadeu Gomes and Kary Ocaña, from LNCC, José Moríñigo, from CIEMAT, Alvaro Coutinho, from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Marta Mattoso, from COPPE/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Patrick Valduriez, from Inria.

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Rafael Mayo Garcia joined the scientific committee at the Artificial Intelligence for Science, Industry and Society (AISIS) 2021.

AISIS is a conference that brings together scientists, industry representatives and policy makers and discusses the implementation of AI in a variety of areas and disciplines. This year’s edition had a great focus on how AI has facilitated the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hosted online, the event took place at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

According to Rafael Mayo Garcia, he worked “on the definition of the agenda and the review of contributions” with different members from around the world. The program and agenda in which RISC2’s partner had an important role in was composed by several keynote speakers, topics and convenors.

Learn more about this event and Rafael Mayo Garcia’s role in it here.

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CARLA is an international conference aimed at providing a forum to foster the growth and strength of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) community in Latin America through the exchange and dissemination of new ideas, techniques, and research in HPC and its applications areas. The general chair of the 2021 edition is Isidoro Gitler, from Cinvestav, who coordinates and participates in all the event’s activities.

Workshops

Different partners of the RISC2 were involved in the organization of the scientific workshops as part of the CARLA 2021 conference. Between seven workshops organized to this conference, two of them are from the RISC2 consortium. The workshop on HPC Collaboration between Europe and Latin America took place online, on October 5, 2021. The goal was to provide a space dedicated to exchange experiences, towards the promotion and support of new collaborations across different countries of Europe and Latin America, within the framework of the recently launched ‘A network for supporting the coordination of High-Performance Computing research between Europe and Latin America’ (RISC2). This workshop achieved a maximum number of 55 participants, with Pedro Vieira Alberto, from the University of Coimbra, as one of the Invited Speakers. Ulisses Cortés, from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, presented the RISC2 project, as an example of HPC collaboration between Europe and Latin America. The chairs of this event were Ulisses Cortés and Rafael Mayo-García, from CIEMAT.

Another workshop organized by the RISC2 team was the workshop on HPC an Energy, which was held online on October 4, with Álvaro Coutinho, from COPPE, as Chair. This workshop focused on HPC techniques applied to the energy sector, in order to improve and reform many industrial sectors. HPC can provide several solutions to the energy sector, e.g., oil and gas solutions in upstream, midstream, and downstream problems; improve wind energy performance; solve issues of combustion efficiency for transportation systems; making nuclear systems more efficient and safer; improving solar energy systems; optimizing wind energy systems; improving the quality and efficiency of seismic and geophysical simulations, etc.

It is important to mention that Ginés Guerrero, from NLHPC, was one of the chairs of workshops organized by CARLA 2021.

Tutorials

Carla Osthoff, from Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica, was Tutorial Chair Member of the 11 tutorials that were accepted at the CARLA 2021. CARLA 2021 provided tutorials and hands-on workshops for both introductory and advanced levels, specifically designed to undergraduate and master students all over Latin- American countries. There were two different periods: Fundamental Tutorials, which included six different tutorials the week before CARLA 2021, and Advanced Tutorials, with five different tutorials held a week after CARLA 2021. CARLA 2021 Tutorials were supported by Latin American, Caribbean, and European institutions.
Esteban Mosckos, from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, was involved in the organization of two different tutorials: “OpenMP: Introduction to shared memory models” and “Introduction to Distributed Memory Models using MPI”. Both activities consisted of theory and hands-on exercises, lasting four hours, with close to 40 assistants each.

The NLHPC partner was also responsible for a tutorial focused on Working with a resource manager on an HPC infrastructure, for the use of SLURM. Two more tutorials were organized by NLHPC, including, the tutorial on Performance Analysis Tools, with the participation of one of the members of the NLHPC Scientific Committee, and the other on Quantum Computing, with the participation of IBM.

The CARLA 2021 conference had more than 30 institutions on the board committee and more than 115 in attendance, connected simultaneously.

All the videos are available here.

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