1. Opportunities offered by LinkSCEEM Project
Mostafa Zoubi
SESAME, Jordan
10th SESAME User Meeting
7 - 9 Nov, 2012
SESAME

2. LinkSCEEM Project LinkSCEEM
Linking the Scientific Computation In Europe and Eastern Mediterranean region
EU funded project.
It’s a project supporting the development of High Performance Computing (HPC) in the Eastern Mediterranean region.
SESAME is a partner in LinkSCEEM project and considered as the leader for dissemination and outreach work package (WP5) and other contributions in different WPs.
LinkSCEEM HPC resources: 3 HPC sites (CyI, BA and NARSS)

3. LinkSCEEM Project Objectives
The main project objective is to enable scientific research using HPC in the region in the fields of:
Synchrotron application ( SR )
Climate research
Digital cultural heritage

4. LinkSCEEM Partners
CyI-CaSToRC, The Cyprus Institute - Cyprus (Project Coordinator)
NARSS, National Authority for Remote Sensing And Space Sciences - Egypt
BA, Bibliotheca Alexandrina - Egypt
FZJ/JSC, Jülich Supercomputing Centre - Germany
NCSA, National Center for Supercomputing Applications/University of Illinois - United States
SESAME, Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East - Jordan.
ESRF, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility - France
MPG, Max Planck Gesekkschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften E.V. - Germany
CYNET, Cyprus' National Research and Education Network  - Cyprus
JUNET, Jordanian Universities Network - Jordan
IUCC, Inter-University Computation Center - Israel

5. SESAME <-> LinkSCEEM
LinkSCEEM project splits into 12 work packages (WPs).
Each WP has its own responsibilities and duties.
Each WP is managed by a partner (WP leader).
SESAME is considered as a leader of WP5 which deals with for dissemination and outreach activates.
Moreover, SESAME has other contributions across different WPs.

6. WP5 Activates,,, SESAME Outreach Activities:
The program includes some activities aiming to create good awareness among students about the problems which can be solved using High Performance Computing.
The outreach program will be helpful for students at different levels on different fields (physics, computer engineering, computer science, biology, …etc).
This program includes Visits to all related universities in the region to present the project (lectures, posters and brochures at universities), Visits of students and teachers to SESAME and Open days and other activities.

7. WP5 Activates,,, SCORE Program:
Synchrotron Computing-Oriented Regional Education
lead role is played by SESAME and ESRF.
“Visits organized for this purpose will be three days long and will take place at SESAME in year 2 of the project for 5 scientists. In year 3 and 4, two of the scientists will be selected to visit ESRF.”
SR data analysis techniques such as image processing and process simulation will be introduced.
This program has been started in 2nd year of the LinkSCEEM project.

8. What Is HPC?
Definition: High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of parallel processing for running advanced application programs efficiently, reliably and quickly. The term applies especially to systems that function above a teraflop or 1012 floating-point operations per second. The term HPC is occasionally used as a synonym for supercomputing.
HPC Goal: Reduce in the execution time and accommodate larger and more complicated problems.

9. Why do we need HPC?
An individual scientific user may be interested in:
Time to completion (from “start” to results)
Computing center admins, experiments/projects, grid providers, etc. maybe more interested in:
Total throughput (for all users of the system)
Efficiency in the use of the resources (Is it all used? Or sitting idle?)
Total resource utilization by a user, experiment, etc.

10. HPC Solutions Synchrotron applications
Decrease the latency for data processing to allow significantly faster data analysis and simulation through the usage of GPUs
Protein-folding attempts to determine the overall shape of a protein based on the sequence of amino acids; the effort may lead to better understanding of biological processes, and new medicines.

11. HPC Solutions Environment Modeling Climate Science
The simulation of earthquakes can be startlingly complex. These simulations can be used to predict which areas are likely to experience a large earthquake, and what the conditions will be. This work helps inform building codes, development planning, and emergency action plans.
Climate Science
Global climate change is a contentious topic these days, in large part due to the extreme complexity of the problem. As computational models improve, we may be better informed in our policy decisions, and able to act in a more unified manner.

12. LinkSCEEM HPC Resources
LinkSCEEM-2 partners have three High Performance Computing
(HPC) centers from the Eastern Mediterranean region:
Computation based Science and Technology Research Center – Cyprus
National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS) – Egypt
Bibliotheca Alexandrina - Egypt

13. LinkSCEEM HPC Resources
Computation based Science and Technology Research Center (CaSToRC)– Cyprus
CyI/Cy-Tera, IBM Hybrid CPU/GPU cluster:
Peak/Sustained Performance
~35 TFlop/s
Number of Nodes
98 twelve-core compute nodes Unaccelerated 18 twelve-core compute nodes, each with dual NVidia M2070 GPUs
Memory/node
48 GB memory per node (Total 4.7 Tbytes)
Disk storage
350 TB
Node-node interconnect
4x QDR Infiniband network for MPI and I/O. Ethernet connection for nodes management.
accelerators
GPUs available
OS info
OS, Compute Node: RHEL OS, Front End & Service Nodes: RHEL
Usability
climate modeling, Astrophysics, high energy and plasma physics, materials science, & for chemistry and 3D visualization.

14. LinkSCEEM HPC Resources
National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS) – NARSS (arch: BlueGene/L, PowerPC)
Peak/Sustained Performance
5.73 TFlops .
Number of Nodes
1024 dual processor compute nodes
Memory/node
512MB SDRAM-DDR memory per node Total memory 5 TB (1024 * .5GB)
Disk storage
36 TB
Other storage
Other, Storage: Tape library for backup.
accelerators
N/A
OS info
OS, Front End & Service Nodes: SuSE 9 Linux
Usability
Space Sciences and Strategic Studies, Geological applications, Engineering Applications and Water Resources, Environmental Studies and Land use, Aerial Photography and Aviation and Scientific Training and Continuous Studies.

15. LinkSCEEM HPC Resources
Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA)- Egypt
BA Sun Microsystems cluster:
Peak/Sustained Performance
11.8 Tflops.
Number of Nodes
130 eight-core compute nodes
Memory/node
8 GB memory per node, Total memory 1.05 TBytes (132 * 8GB)
Disk storage
36 TB shared scratch (lustre)
Other storage
Other, Storage: Tape library for backup.
accelerators
N/A
OS info
OS, Compute Node: RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) OS, Front End & Service Nodes: RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5)
Usability
3D computer graphics, cultural heritage, analysis of the visualized data, Medical Visualization, Software developments.

16. LinkSCEEM HPC Opportunities
LinkSCEEM allows researchers from the Eastern Mediterranean to apply for time
on high-end high-performance computers via a peer review process.
Preparatory access allows researchers to apply for code scalability testing and
also support for code development and optimization from Cy-Tera and LinkSCEEM
software experts. Preparatory access allows researchers to optimize their codes
before responding to project calls.

17. LinkSCEEM HPC Opportunities
How to Apply 
All proposals must be submitted via the LinkSCEEM website following instructions given at LinkSCEEM project's Access & Allocations page. All mandatory fields must be filled in before the application form can be submitted. After the form has been saved, applicants can continue to access it and update it before they finally submit it.

18. Job Opportunity @ SESAME
Software Engineer:
As SESAME is a part of the LinkSCEEM project, the project provides funding for a short-term contract to work on porting codes to GPU's.
M/F Job vacancy.
Must have experience in scientific computing and parallel programming.
Very good experience in C programming

19. Thank you,,,
SESAME