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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A country that does not have the computational capacity to solve its own problems will have no alternative but to try to acquire solutions provided by others. One of the most important aspects of sovereignty in the 21st century is the ability to produce mathematical models and to have the capacity to solve them. Today, the availability of computing power commensurate with one’s wealth exponentially increases a country’s capacity to produce knowledge. in the developed world, it is estimated that for every dollar invested in supercomputing, the return to society is of the order of US$ 44(1) and to the academic world US$ 30(2). For these reasons, HPC occupies an important place on the political and diplomatic agendas of developed countries. 

In Latin America, investment in HPC is very low compared to what’s the US, Asia and Europe are doing. In order to quantify this difference, we present the tables below, which show the accumulated computing capacity in the ranking of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world – the TOP500(3) – (Table 1), and the local reality (Table 2). Other data are also included, such as the population (in millions), the number of researchers per 1,000 inhabitants (Res/1000), the computing capacity per researcher (Gflops/Res) and the computing capacity per US$ million of GPD. In Table 1, we have grouped the countries by geographical area. America appears as the area with the highest computing capacity, essentially due to the USA, which has almost 45% of the world’s computing capacity in the TOP500. It if followed by Asia and then Europe. Tis TOP500 list includes mainly academic research centres, but also industry ones, typically those used in applied research (many private ones do not wish to publish such information for obvious reasons). For example, in Brazil – which shows good computing capacity with 88,175 TFlops – the vast majority is in the hands of the oil industry and only about 3,000 TFlops are used for basic research. Countries listed in the TOP500 invest in HPC from a few TFlops per million GDP (Belgium 5, Spain 7, Bulgaria 8), through countries investing in the order of hundreds (Italy 176, Japan 151, USA 138), to even thousands, as is the case in Finland with 1,478. For those countries where we were able to find data on the number of researchers, these range from a few Gflops per researcher (Belgium 19, Spain 24, Hungary 52) to close to 1,000 GFlops, i.e. 1 TFlop (USA 970, Italy 966), with Finland surpassing this barrier with 4,647. Note that, unlike what happens locally, countries with a certain degree of development invest every 3-4 years in supercomputing, so the data we are showing will soon be updated and there will be variations in the list. For example, this year a new supercomputer will come into operation in Spain(4), which, with an investment of some 150 million euros, will give Spain one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe – and the world.

Table 1. HPC availability per researcher and relative to GDP in the TOP500 countries (includes HPC in industry).

The local reality is far from this data. Table 2 shows data from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. In Chile, the availability of computing power is 2-3 times less per researcher than in countries with less computing power in the OECD and up to 100 times less than a researcher in the US. In Chile, our investment measured in TFlops per million US$ of GDP is 166 times less than in the US; with respect to European countries that invest less in HPC it is 9 times less, and with respect to the European average (including Finland) it is 80 times less, i.e. the difference is considerable. It is clear that we need to close this gap. An investment go about 5 million dollars in HPC infrastructure in the next 5 years would close this gap by a factor of almost 20 times our computational capacity. However, returning to the example of Spain, the supercomputer it will have this year will offer 23 times more computing power than at present and, therefore, we will only maintain our relative distance. If we do not invest, the dap will increase by at least 23 times and will end up being huge. Therefore, we do not only need a one-time investment, but we need to ensure a regular investment. Some neighbouring countries are already investing significantly in supercomputing. This is the case in Argentina, where they are investing 7 million dollars (2 million for the datacenter and 5 million to buy a new supercomputer), which will increase their current capacities by almost 40 times(5).

Table 2. HPC availability per researcher and relative to GDP in the region (*only HPC capacity in academia is considered in this table).

For the above reasons, we are working to convince the Chilean authorities that we must have greater funding and, more crucially, permanent state funding in HPC. In relation to this, on July 6 we signed a collaboration agreement between 44 institutions with the support of the Ministry of Science to work on the creation of the National Supercomputing Laboratory(6). The agreement recognised that supercomputers are a critical infrastructure for Chile’s development, that it is necessary to centralise the requirements/resources at the national level, obtain permanent funding from the State and create a new institutional framework to provide governance. In an unprecedented inter-institutional collaboration in Chile, the competition for HPC resources at the national level is eliminated ad the possibility of direct funding from the State is opened up without generating controversy.

Undoubtedly, supercomputing is a fundamental pillar for the development of any country, where increasing investment provides a strategic advantage, and in Latin America we should not be left behind.

By NLHPC

References

(1) Hyperion Research HPC Investments Bring High Returns

(2) EESI-2 Special Study To Measure And Model How Investments In HPC Can Create Financial ROI And Scientific Innovation In Europe 

(3) https://top500.org/ 

(4) https://www.lavanguardia.com/ciencia/20230129/8713515/llega-superordenador-marenostrum-5-bsc-barcelona.html

(5) https://www.hpcwire.com/2022/12/15/argentina-announces-new-supercomputer-for-national-science/

(6) https://uchile.cl/noticias/187955/44-instituciones-crearan-el-laboratorio-nacional-de-supercomputacion

The post Towards a greater HPC capacity in Latin America first appeared on RISC2 Project.

Date: April 26, 2023 | 3 p.m. (UTC+1)

The post Webinar: Improving energy-efficiency of High-Performance Computing clusters first appeared on RISC2 Project.

The RISC2 main result will be a cooperation roadmap targeting policymakers, the scientific and industrial communities, identifying key application areas, HPC infrastructure and policy requirements, and exploring ways for the activities established during the project to last beyond its lifetime.

This document is organized in 3 sections. The first one introduces this report, describing precedents, objectives, and methodological approach, and shares an overview of the strategic importance of HPC, computational and data sciences. The second section addresses the Latin American HPC landscape by representing an overview of the HPC activity in the region and then focuses on the targeted country though seven national reports. The last section advances on recommendations for Latin America to encourage sustainability in RDI in HPC and strengthen bi-regional collaborations.

Read the White Paper on RDI in Latin America here. 

The post RISC2 publishes the White Paper on HPC Research, Development, and Innovation in Latin America first appeared on RISC2 Project.

The RISC2 consortium presented the work done so far, demonstrating achievements, and outputs, such as the creation of a strong collaborative network between the European and the Latin American research and industrial communities on advanced HPC application development, the HPC Observatory, the promotion of science, technology, and innovation to overcome different challenges, the project website and the White Paper, among other.

The European Commission was represented by Josiane Xavier Parreira, Laura Tosoratto and Lidia Yamamoto. The reviewers recognized and acknowledged the work done so far and provided advice and suggestions for future improvement. Official result of the review will be available in about one month.

The post RISC2 Project first review meeting first appeared on RISC2 Project.

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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The Science, Technology and Innovation Committee held the forum “Presentation of Global Indices” with the main goal of exchanging ideas about past and present experiences that can lead the world to a sustainable, humane and equitable development.

During his presentation, Mateo Valero Cortés presented the RISC2 project, a network focused on supporting the coordination of High-Performance Computing research between Europe and Latin America. According to Mateo Valero Cortés, RISC2 will contribute to improving collaboration between these regions.

As a keynote speaker, the director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center addressed some of the challenges that humanity faces, stressing the importance of research, development and innovation. For example, digital twins, energy production and, and quantum computing, among other topics.

The director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center addressed some of the challenges that humanity faces, stressing the importance of research, development and innovation. For example, Mateo Valero Cortés mentioned digital twins, energy production, and quantum computing, among other topics.

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