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Supercomputers are used to power discoveries and to reduce the time-to-results in a wide variety of disciplines such as engineering, physical sciences, and healthcare. They are globally considered as vital for staying competitive in defense, the financial sector, several mainstream businesses, and even agriculture. An integral requirement for enabling the usage of the supercomputers, like any other computer, is the availability of the software. Scalable and efficient software is typically required for optimally using the large-scale supercomputing platforms, and thereby, effectively leveraging the investments in the advanced CyberInfrastructure (CI). However, developing and maintaining such software is challenging due to several factors, such as, (1) no well-defined processes or guidelines for writing software that can ensure high-performance on supercomputers, and (2) shortfall of trained workforce having skills in both software engineering and supercomputing. With the rapid advancement in the computer architecture discipline, the complexity of the processors that are used in the supercomputers is also increasing, and, in turn, the task of developing efficient software for supercomputers is further becoming challenging and complex. To mitigate the aforementioned challenges, there is a need for a common platform that brings together different stakeholders from the areas of supercomputing and software engineering. To provide such a platform, the second workshop on Software Challenges to Exascale Computing (SCEC) was organized in Delhi, India, during December 13–14, 2018. The SCEC 2018 workshop informed participants about the challenges in large-scale HPC software development and steered them in the direction of building international collaborations for finding solutions to those challenges. The workshop provided a forum through which hardware vendors and software developers can communicate with each other and influence the architecture of the next-generation supercomputing systems and the supporting software stack. By fostering cross-disciplinary associations, the workshop served as a stepping-stone towards innovations in the future. We are very grateful to the Organizing and Program Committees (listed below), the sponsors (US National Science Foundation, Indian National Supercomputing Mission, Atos, Mellanox, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, San Diego Supercomputing Center, Texas Advanced Computing Center), and the participants for their contributions to making the SCEC 2018 workshop a success.
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NCSA Internship Program for Cyberinfrastructure Professionals
In 2017, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) established a pilot internship program for cyberinfrastructure (CI) professionals. The program, funded by NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) (award 1730519), was designed to address the shortage of a workforce with the specialized skills needed to support advanced CI operations. The program was envisioned to provide internship opportunities for individuals who want to gain first-hand experience in the CI operations at a supercomputing center, and develop and refine instructional materials to serve as a template that is openly distributed for use by other centers and institutions to train CI professionals. Program interns are selected from a pool of applicants with the main selection criteria of having a completed classwork equivalent to an associate degree and a demonstrated interest in a career in CI operations. Interns work directly with a group of NCSA engineers in one of the areas of CI focus to gain hands-on experience in the deployment and operation of high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure at a leading HPC center. The expectation is that interns will enter a workforce that will develop, deploy, manage and support advanced CI at other universities, centers, and industry to meet the needs of the national computational science research community across academia and industry.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1730519
- PAR ID:
- 10170072
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC ’20)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3311790.339662
