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 Alliance’s aim is to foster the development of secure, resilient and human-centric digital infrastructures on the basis of a values-based framework, ensuring a democratic and transparent enabling environment and putting a strong emphasis on privacy and digital rights. It is the first intercontinental digital partnership agreed between both regions under Global Gateway investment strategy, the EU’s offer for trusted and sustainable connections with partner countries.

More information here.

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In addition, Latin American countries have signed bilateral science and technology (S&T) agreements with the European Commission (EC). Within this framework, both parties participate in setting common principles, goals and conditions necessary to ensure a level playing field for researchers from both sides of the Atlantic. Brazil and Mexico recently signed new bilateral S&T agreements with the EC in November 2021 and March 2022, respectively. Co-funding schemes signed by the EC and their counterparts (Conacyt in Mexico; CNPq, FINEP and CONFAP in Brazil) support national partners participating in successful Horizon Europe projects.

These initiatives aim to encourage participation from Latin American entities in Horizon Europe calls, strengthening bilateral relations between the EU and Latin American countries, especially in research topics with a supranational scope (climate change, disease prevention, and renewable energies, for example).

A successful example of bilateral co-funding was the project ENERXICO (2019-2021), which received grants from Horizon 2020 and the Mexican Department of Energy (CONACYT-SENER Hidrocarburos).

ENERXICO applied HPC techniques to energy industry simulations of critical interest to Mexico: oil & gas industry in upstream, midstream and downstream problems, wind energy industry and combustion efficiency for transportation. The main objectives of the project were:

• Develop beyond state-of-the-art high-performance simulation tools for the energy industry
• Increase the oil & gas reserves using geophysical exploration for subsalt reservoirs
• Improve refining and transport efficiency of heavy oil
• Develop a robust wind energy sector to mitigate oil dependency
• Improve fuel generation using biofuels

The consortium, coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the Mexican National Institute for Nuclear Research (ININ), included stakeholders from academia and the energy industry from the EU and Mexico.

Strengthening international cooperation goes beyond improving bilateral relations; S&T collaboration between regions can encourage increased multilateral research ecosystems within these regions, helping bridge the gaps in the Latin American scientific field due to the absence of a common regional funding source.

By Barcelona Supercomputing Center

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Mexico has a solid tradition in scientific research and education and has excellent human resources in the computer science field. Participants focused on promoting cooperation between supercomputing centers across the country. With that aim, they focused on the need to improve connectivity and engage on networks that allow for efficient and effective coordination among centers.

Leveraging from other cooperation-focused initiatives, like the Red Española de Supercomputación (RES) in Spain and PRACE at the European level, the Mexican HPC community is seeking to kick-off a nationwide collaboration network.

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The fund, granted by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development, provides the possibility to finance and maintain the center’s team of engineers for the next five years, with the chance of renewal. If everything is going well and according to plan, the Center will be granted funding for another five years. The fund gives NLHPC the confidence to continue to grow and reach their objectives.

“Collaboration with international networks was important in the evaluation of this call. Undoubtedly, the fact of being part of RISC2 has been very relevant for us to be awarded the project”, stated Ginés Guerrero, NLHPC Director.

The NLHPC is the national supercomputing center in Chile, with specialization in high performance computing, that manages Guacolda-Leftraru, the most powerful supercomputer in South America. This infrastructure appeared in November in the IO500 list, a ranking of the fastest supercomputing (HPC) storage systems in the world, where it was placed in 39th place.

During the last year, more than 400 users from different areas of knowledge, more than 45 institutions have used the NLHPC. The center is at the service of the national scientific community, industry, and State and its main goal is to satisfy the demand for high performance computing.

Photo: Comunicaciones FCFM- U. de Chile

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This funding will help continue the work of the NLHPC, while strengthening its supercomputing infrastructures, which have been crucial to the national scientific community.

It is important to mention that the submission to the contest was supported by the RISC2 project, since the NLHPC’s team received support letters from the RISC2 consortium, including BSC, RedCLARA, RICAP, and SCALAC.

According to ANID, “the II Contest for Major Scientific and Technological Equipment Fondequip seeks to install scientific capacity, covering the country’s need for a larger and more extensive infrastructure, which houses sophisticated and innovative scientific equipment, promoting and facilitating the development of research excellence in the national territory with this scientific and technological resources. It also seeks to position Chile at the forefront of research excellence and frontier research at the international level”.

About NLHPC

The NLHPC specializes in HPC and manages Guacolda-Leftraru, the most powerful supercomputer in Chile and one of the most powerful in South America.

The NLHPC is at the service of the national scientific community, the State, and the industry that requires HPC services. Its main mission is to meet the national scientific demand for high performance computing, providing high-quality services and promoting its use in both basic and applied research problems.

The center began to take shape in 2009 as an initiative of the Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM) at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile, which invited different institutions to join efforts towards the creation of a national supercomputing laboratory. The response of these institutions was very enthusiastic, and their support allowed the center to start operating in 2011. Since then, most research institutions in the country are part of the center, constituting the largest scientific network in Chile sharing an infrastructure. The laboratory has also signed collaboration agreements with several state institutions, international networks, and supercomputing centers around the world.

Photo: Guacolda-Leftraru, by National Laboratory for High Performance Computing (NLHPC)

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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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