Head out on the HPC Highway: Opening Up HPC to Underrepresented & Cross-Disciplinary Domains
Jingbo Wang2, Fred Fung2, Marlies Hankel, Fathima Haseen1, Ann Backhaus1, Sarah Beecroft1
1Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, Kensington , WA , Australia
2National Computational Infrastructure, Acton, ACT, Australia
Abstract
SITUATION
“Traditional” domains have historically consumed a lion’s share of High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure, especially in supercomputing. For example, at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, almost 70% of super compute allocation goes to Engineering and Physical Sciences projects.
What are the key barriers to entry and/or scaling for underrepresented (“Non-traditional”) domains?
TASK
During this Birds of a Feather (BoF), we will discuss the current project demographics on Australia’s top supercomputers. The goal is to identify the top perceived barriers to using HPC across all aspects of a project, including the human, technology, and science angles.
ACTION
During this BoF, we’ll conduct a short, introductory, data-driven context setter.
We’ll then conduct an in-the-room environmental scan of perceived barriers to HPC domain entry as well as challenges to securing HPC allocations within Underrepresented Domains and/or Cross-Disciplinary Domains. We’ll use real-time, online means to identify and rank priorities.
Finally, we’ll unpack those challenges with the goal of identifying actionable steps resulting from the BoF. Current approaches being taken in this space by BoF presenters will be given as springboards for further discussion and brainstorming.
RESULTS
One key outcome of this BoF is to name the top challenges being faced by Underrepresented and Cross-disciplinary domains, unpack their complexity, and provide ideas to lower – or altogether eliminate – those barriers.
As presenters, we want to leave with next steps to an important question: How can we construct potential “on ramps” into HPC for currently underrepresented domains?
Biography
Fathima Haseen
Fathima is a learning and development specialist with over 15 years of experience, designing, developing and delivering successful training programs across various industries and sectors.
She has worked across British, American and Australian education systems and has significant experience in adult education. She also has extensive leadership experience in staff development, process and productivity improvements and overall performance management.
Fathima holds a bachelor’s degree in Computing and a Master’s in Business Administration. She is a qualified Trainer and Assessor with a passion to improve the skills of organizations and its people through effective learning and development strategies.
Ann Backhaus
Ann is the Education and Training Manager at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.
Ann has significant experience in adult teaching and learning. She has led distributed, global teaching and learning teams strategically and operationally, in the creation of such assets as e-learning materials, digital stories, microlearning units, webinars, demonstrations, web sites and wiki sites, digital classroom courses and workshops, and a variety of enablement materials. Her experience spans numerous industries and sectors.
Sarah Beecroft
Sarah obtained a PhD in Medicine from UWA in 2020. She has a background in both laboratory and computational genetics, specifically focussing on disease gene discovery in neuromuscular disorders.
She is now part of the Supercomputing Applications team at Pawsey, working to support bioinformatics users through workflow development and optimisation, training, and advocacy
Fred Fung, NCI – Presenter (Bio coming)