As the coordinator of the High Performance Computing Center (Nacad) at COPPE/UFRJ, Alvaro Coutinho, presented advances in AI in Engineering and the importance of multidisciplinary research networks to address current issues in Scientific Machine Learning. Alvaro took the opportunity to highlight the need for Brazil to invest in high performance computing capacity.

The country’s sovereignty needs autonomy in producing ML advances, which depends on HPC support at the Universities and Research Centers. Brazil has nine machines in the Top 500 list of the most powerful computer systems in the world, but almost all at Petrobras company, and Universities need much more. ML is well-known to require HPC, when combined to scientific computer simulations it becomes essential.

The conventional notion of ML involves training an algorithm to automatically discover patterns, signals, or structures that may be hidden in huge databases and whose exact nature is unknown and therefore cannot be explicitly programmed. This field may face two major drawbacks: the need for a significant volume of (labelled) expensive to acquire data and limitations for extrapolating (making predictions beyond scenarios contained in the trained data difficult).

Considering that an algorithm’s predictive ability is a learning skill, current challenges must be addressed to improve the analytical and predictive capacity of Scientific ML algorithms, for example, to maximize its impact in applications of renewable energy. References [1-5] illustrate recent advances in Scientific Machine Learning in different areas of engineering and computer science.

References:

[*] https://www.coppe.ufrj.br/pt-br/planeta-coppe-noticias/noticias/coppe-e-sociedade-especialistas-debatem-os-reflexos-da-inteligencia

[1] Baker, Nathan, Steven L. Brunton, J. Nathan Kutz, Krithika Manohar, Aleksandr Y. Aravkin, Kristi Morgansen, Jennifer Klemisch, Nicholas Goebel, James Buttrick, Jeffrey Poskin, Agnes Blom-Schieber, Thomas Hogan, Darren McDonaldAlexander, Frank, Bremer, Timo, Hagberg, Aric, Kevrekidis, Yannis, Najm, Habib, Parashar, Manish, Patra, Abani, Sethian, James, Wild, Stefan, Willcox, Karen, and Lee, Steven. Workshop Report on Basic Research Needs for Scientific Machine Learning: Core Technologies for Artificial Intelligence. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.2172/1478744.

[2] Brunton, Steven L., Bernd R. Noack, and Petros Koumoutsakos. “Machine learning for fluid mechanics.” Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 52 (2020): 477-508.

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RISC2 was responsible for the organization of the “HPC and Data Sciences meet Scientific Computing” workshop, on September 26, which gathered 15 participants. This workshop discussed different topics, such as Scientific Machine Learning, High Performance Scientific Computing, and Data Science. Álvaro Coutinho, Marta Mattoso (from COPPE/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), Frédéric Valentin (from the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing), Luc Giraud, Stéphane Lanteri, and Patrick Valduriez (from Inria) were the organizers of the workshop.

RISC2 also organized a tutorial about physics-informed neural networks. Our partners from Brazil, Álvaro Coutinho and Romulo Montalvão, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, António Tadeu Gomes and Frédéric Valentin, from the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing, were the instructors of the session.

Our partners Carlos Barrios, from the Universidad Industrial de Santander, was one of the General Chairs of the Conference. “With 130 participants from all over the world, CARLA 2022 was a space of “rediscover” (to rediscover us) after two years in virtual mode. More than the scientific tracks and the panels, CARLA 2022 allowed us to discuss the challenges and the strengthening of collaboration between the partners (old and new)”, says Carlos Barrios.

Various RISC2 members also gave different presentations. Alba Cervera-Lierta, from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, was one of the Keynote Speakers of the CARLA Conference, with a presentation about Quantum Computing. Esteban Meneses, from CeNAT, participated in a presentation about “Implementing a GPU-Portable Field-Line Tracing Application with OpenMP Offload”. Pablo Mininni, from the University of Buenos Aires, was responsible for one of the invited talks about “Multi-level parallelisation of computational fluid dynamics codes using CUDA, MPI and OpenMP.”

CARLA is an international conference that provides a forum to foste the growth and strength of the HPC community in Latin America through the exchange and dissemination of new ideas, techniques, and research in HPC and its application areas.

Also during the conference, the RISC2 members had a networking meeting with the SCALAC members, reinforcing the partnership with the SCALAC network.

About CARLA 2022:

“CARLA 2022 was a space of “rediscover” (to rediscover us) after two years in virtual mode. More than the scientific tracks and the panels, CARLA 2022 allowed us to discuss the challenges and the strengthening of collaboration between the partners (old and new)”.

Carlos Barrios Hernandez,  Universidad Industrial de Santander

“Having the RISC2 project supporting a networking dinner in CARLA was crucial in building up the next research collaboration we want to have in the region. I am thoroughly satisfied with the experience of connecting with European and Latin American peers”.

Esteban Meneses, CeNAT

“Among the most important elements, I can highlight the quality and variety of paper presented. This indicates to me that the Latin American HPC community is growing and getting stronger. In addition, I was able to notice efforts to generate relations between Europe and Latin America through the RISC2 project”.

Elvis Rojas Ramírez, CeNAT

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The BCS-CNS hosted the ACM Summer School 2022. From 29 August to 2 September 2022, students, researchers, and professors from all over the world gathered to discuss High-Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning.

The RISC2 project supported the participation of Latin American students. We had the opportunity to travel from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Costa Rica to connect with leading researchers in HPC at the ACM Summer School and boost our professional careers. For some of us, it was our first time in Europe. For others, it was the first time we had the chance to visit a research centre that hosts a TOP500 supercomputer such as Mare Nostrum. We shared our latent curiosity to learn, meet, and relate to people from all over the world.

We were welcomed to the ACM School by a legend in the world of HPC, Professor Mateo Valero, director of the BSC. World-class lecturers and researchers introduced us to topics that we had only read about in scientific articles, like specialized processors for machine learning, neuromorphic engineering, technical software development for new architectures, and vector accelerators. We could delve into the state-of-the-art of many lines of study, opening our minds in countless ways. We faced new challenges and found new perspectives that would allow us to advance our research projects and complete our graduate degrees.

Throughout the week, we met colleagues from all over the world with different lines of research, projects, and fields of study. This opportunity allowed us to create new relationships, nurtured us at a cultural level, and built new ties of friendship and possible professional contributions in the future, connecting Europe with Latin America. Likewise, we strengthened relations between Latin Americans, usually separated despite being neighbours. Conversations that initially arose with academic topics ended with more trivial issues, all accompanied by a cup of coffee or even a mate brought directly from Argentina. These conversations go hand in hand with great minds and unique people.

Professors like Valerie Taylor from the Argonne National Laboratory, Charlotte Frenkel from the Delft University of Technology, Luca Benini from the Università di Bologna and ETHZ, and Jordi Torres from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, among many others, allowed us to be part of a world that, in many cases, is hard to reach for many students in Latin America. Thanks to the RISC2 project, we had the opportunity to be part of this process, learn and bring back to our countries the knowledge about state of the art in HPC architectural trends and a new vision of the world of computing.

At the end of an intense week of study and conversations, of new knowledge and new friends, we returned to our countries of origin. Together, we have brought a new vision of the world of computing, new contacts, and many new perspectives that we can apply in our studies and share with our colleagues in the research groups and, perhaps, start new foci of study.

Finally, we hope to return and meet again, make new friends, share the knowledge acquired and our experiences, and further deepen the ties within Latin America and between Europe and Latin America. We hope that other fellow Latin Americans will also benefit from similar opportunities and that they can live these kinds of experiences. The RISC2 project gave us a unique opportunity, so we want to thank them and all of those who made it possible.

By:

• Claudio Aracena, University of Chile
• Christian Asch, CeNAT, Costa Rica
• Luis Alejandro Torres Niño, UIS, Colombia
• Matías Mazzanti, UBA, Argentina
• Matheus Borges Seidel, UFRJ, Brazil

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“Jack Dongarra’s contributions to the fields of computational science and high-performance computing are fundamental for the advancement of advanced computing in the exascale era”, says Alvaro Coutinho.

This initiative took place under a Seminar Cycle, promoted by PESC/Coppe, which aims to bring accessible lectures given by experienced researchers and professors to a wider audience who works in the HPC field in Brazil. The talk is in Portuguese, and it is available in YouTube at the link: https://youtu.be/zGbZic4c21o.

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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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“The foreseeable expansion of Eureka to Brazil means new great opportunities to all RISC2 partners”, said Rui Oliveira, member INESC TEC’s Board and director of the Center for Advanced Computing at the University of Minho (MACC).

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There are five domains of applications of interest to this working group:  Energy (in particular green and renewable energies), Smart Cities (AI-based modelling for the design of smart devices and IoT), Transport(green aviation), Climate (specifically climate change and weather forecast), and Health (particularly personalized medicine, epidemiology, cancer research, cardiology, drug design). Some of these domains have links with industry, while others are associated with research priorities of governmental academic organizations in Latin America and Europe.

Within this working group, there are three main actions in perspective:

-Organization of joint workshops and joint work between RISC2 partners through various bilateral programs;

-Organization of seminars and workshops with companies and research institutions to discuss their challenges, and let them know how RISC2 R&D can deliver innovative scientific solutions;

-Participation in proposals for joint projects in the Latin America area.

This working group was proposed by Inria, LNCC, UFRJ/COPPE, partners of the RISC2 project.

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