HPC

In this guest post, Sultana Nahar, Ph.D., writes about how OSC resources helped her teach an atomic astrophysics workshop at Cairo University in Egypt recently. Nahar has been involved in the promotion of physics research and education in developing countries for many years and OSC has worked to help facilitate many of her workshops. 

Members of the Ohio Supercomputer Center have been attending the SC Conference since its inception in 1988. Quite simply, it's the premier event for the high performance computing community. And it provides incredible benefits to attendees, three of which stand out among the rest. 

The upcoming summer Olympics in Rio mark the 80th anniversary of Jesse Owens' historic performance in Berlin, Germany. Eighty years later, the Ohio Supercomputer Center – inspired by the Olympian’s speed – will name its newest (and fastest) supercomputer cluster after Owens, a decision that isn’t taken lightly by any stretch of the imagination. Take a look at our article recalling Owens' epic feat 80 years ago and how it still resonates in so many lives today. 

For small- to medium-sized companies to keep pace with both their customers and their competition, they need a technological advantage. That advantage might just be modeling, simulation and data analysis, and that's where AweSim comes in. But where exactly are we going? How can we get there? And how can we engage? 

The democratization of Computer Aided Engineering was a hot topic at the recent 2016 NAFEMS meeting in Seattle. And while many approaches to wider access to modeling and simulation are emerging, a clear path hasn't quite been decided upon yet. One thing that is clear is AweSim plans to be part of the solution, here's how: 

Recently, AweSim Director Alan Chalker had the opportunity to sit in on Desktop Engineering's roundtable discussion, "Supercomputing for the Rest of Us." The goal of the roundtable was to discuss the democratization of high performance computing modeling and simulation. It turned out to be an excellent platform to continue to spread the word about how the AweSim program is working to lower the perception and reality of exclusivity to this powerful tool, from which all manufacturers can benefit. 

A few weeks back I took the opportunity to write Jeff Crompton of AltaSim Technologies(link sends e-mail) to let him know how impressed I was by the recent article he wrote about the HeatSinkSim application. I was surprised to learn how comprehensive the model was, with regard to including conduction, convection and radiation effects. Jeff replied, “Thanks.

Ed. Note: In high performance computing lore, it is said that Apple Computer bought a Cray supercomputer in the late 1980s to help design the company’s next personal computer. When he learned of this, the founder of Cray replied that ironically he was designing his next supercomputer with an Apple computer. Today, computer engineers working for the AweSim initiative are using supercomputers to design all matter of products and processes.

Is there a word for being simultaneously exhausted and re-invigorated at the same time? If not there should be.

It’s how I feel every year following the annual Supercomputing Conference – the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis – this year aptly named SC15(link sends e-mail).

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) launched OSC OnDemand in January and gave presentations about it at various meetings and conferences, including the XSEDE conference in July. Through OnDemand, users can run high-performance computing (HPC) and visualization on Glenn and Oakley, our production clusters. To some of our users, I suspect OnDemand looks like a web site and nothing more. I think it is substantially more. I think it is Sputnik.