Conference Highlights GISELA-CHAIN Conference Mexico June 2012 Federico Ruggieri - INFN
2 The people
3 Most frequently used words #1 – Science Gateway #2 – Sustainability #3 – Infrastructure #4 – Applications #5 – Users Outsiders: Coffee-Break, GISELA, Latin America, Chain
4 Some numbers 3 full days of work 83 registered people 11 Sessions 3 of which with Keynote Speeches 49 Presentations with 10 Keynote Speeches Following on-line live : consistently 20 - peak 60 people
5 Let’s start from the beginning The conference declared two main objectives: Present outstanding results obtained by Scientific Communities using e-Infrastructures with focus on the advent of the new VRC-driven Science Gateway (SG) and their first outcomes; Under the auspices of RedCLARA, discuss policies and plans for the long-term sustainability of SG-based Advanced Computing Services, with special emphasis on Latin America.
6 Large/high impact VRCs HEP – Still a large and well organised community with years program: they can be the backbone community Life Science – Large community with high Research/Social impact: they can involve also private funding/industries. Health – Potentially very high social impact some attempts to go from research only to clinical support: impact on the citizen Seismology – Seismic & Tsunami Hazard assesment is one of the most relevant domains with social impact and has a real worldwide coverage Climate – World coverage, but also Regional impact and High Political impact and support
7 Other interesting communities Mathematics – Computing resources can attract new users Chemistry – Traditionally CPU hungry applications Human Language – Mobility and social science coupled with computing resources as intermediate steps Atomic and Molecular Data bases – Integration of DBs and worldwide community of users Astrophysics – Several different activities and groups spread all over the world with a strong involvement of LA
8 Technologies (1) Science Gateway: Easy access of non (Grid) skilled users Interoperability towards different regional eInfrastructures Future improvements in usability and available services Already adopted by several projects/communities Several Portals are already available and migation to SG is an option but this has to be considered carefully High Performance Computing Large facilities can be integrated GPU/low cost multi-thread computing has been integrated Volunteer Computing Several developments and many (simple) applications using it
9 Technologies (2) Data Access to distributed data repositories around the world (policies and data discovery and compatibility) and specific FS solutions Data curation, management and long term availability is an issue no coherent strategy yet Clouds Virtual Machines are sometimes proposed to simplify the life of site managers (e.g. middleware update) & users (e.g. certified environment) Data clouds are also attractive and some soultions are available or emerging but there are still issues about long term persistence, performances, security & privacy Grids on top of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or VM on top of Grid infrastructures: both paths are investigated by now Federations are still an issue
10 New projects MESOAMERICA – Addresses the central America, but extends also beyond. A very promising forerunner project ELCIRA – Mainly Network-oriented, but offers opportunities to support cooperation between EU and LA CHAIN-REDS – A follow-up of CHAIN to start implementing the CHAIN’s Roadmap and address Data Infrastructures and Clouds Others to be submitted
11 Outcomes LA infastructure sustainability: CLARA will extend its activity to cover also Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI) Several Institutions have declared their availability to support the take-over from GISELA: UNAM, CUDI, CEDIA An Agreement should be signed to officially confirm a take-over plan with personnel figures (skills & names) CHAIN and CHAIN-REDS will support this transition ELCIRA, MESOAMERICA and other future projects could complement the effort and push the e-Infrastructures in LA towards new more ambitious objectives and achievements
12 Towards 2020 Let’s profit of the human network we set-up (the most important resource we have) Let’s be ambitious (and visionary) and not limit ourselves to the mere survival actions Let’s think bigger beyond the LA and EU: Federated Research & Education Networks (FREN) involving: LA, EU, Africa, Asia or even more general Federation of eInfrastructures for Research & Education (FIRE), addressing Networks, Grids, Clouds, Data, etc. There may be a case for direct funding of EC to relevant eInfrastructures (K. Glinos)
13 Conclusions LA Infrastructures are mature and have taken new approaches to sustainability Regional applications are numberous and differenciated (several scientific domains and social impacts) New «regional» projects have been proposed for local funding Brainstorming on future (2020) initiatives should be started without shyness The current economical situation is generally difficult but that’s when one should start to use better the only unrestricted resource: the brain.
14 Thanks to all the participants
Thank you