COMPUTING LANDSCAPE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CANADA Navigating HPC, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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COMPUTING LANDSCAPE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CANADA Navigating HPC, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Jan 16, 2024 1.28k likes •1.58k views

THE ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING LANDSCAPE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CANADA Navigating HPC, ARC and DRI RY AN T HOM SON, SY ST EM S ADM I NI ST R AT O R UBC AD V A NC E D RESE AR C H COM PUT ING AGENDA Alphabet Soup Advanced Research

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THE ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING LANDSCAPE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CANADA

Navigating HPC, ARC and DRI

RY AN T HOM SON, SY ST EM S ADM I NI ST R AT O R UBC AD V A NC E D RESE AR C H COM PUT ING

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AGENDA

  • Alphabet Soup
  • Advanced Research Computing in BC and Canada
  • The UBC model for ARC and Researcher Engagement
  • Recommended Resources
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ALPHABET SOUP

HPC, ARC AND DRI – OH MY!

Photo Credit: Hit Entertainment Limited

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WHAT IS HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING (HPC)?

  • Industry-standard term to describe “really fast” computers – typically much faster

than general purpose computers

  • Performance measured in Floating Point Operations per Second (FLOPS)
  • Typically refers to a “cluster” of independent computers interconnected via high-

bandwidth, low-latency network & high performance storage (“supercomputer”)

  • Often used to describe massively parallel (multi-core, multi-computer) workloads
  • Usually implies a scheduling & resource management software layer
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WHAT IS ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING (ARC)?

  • HPC! CPUs! GPUs! Accelerators! Big Data! Cloud! RDM! BBQ!
  • Computational research requirements exceeding typical desktop computer
  • WestGrid – “everything beyond a standard desktop workstation, which

includes cloud, supercomputers / high performance computing (HPC), data management, and data storage, all in support of research”

  • At UBC – “An Institutionally-dedicated service for researchers across all

disciplines working on questions that have large data and computational needs”

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WHAT IS DIGITAL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE (DRI)?

  • HPC is a component of ARC, which is a component of DRI – kindasortamaybe?
  • Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada terminology
  • Leadership Council on Digital Research Infrastructure (LCDRI)
  • Compute Canada & Regional Partners (WestGrid, etc.)
  • Canada’s National Research & Education Network - CANARIE, BCNET, etc.
  • Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL / ABRC) & Portage Network
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IN SUMMARY: HPC, ARC AND DRI ARE…

OPTIMIZED RESEARCH HORSE-POWER

Photo Credit: Hasbro Studios Photo Credit: Hasbro Studios Photo Credit: Warner Bros.

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WHERE AND HOW

OF ARC IN BC AND CANADA

Photo Credit: DHX Media

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WHERE DOES ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING HAPPEN?

  • Locally – In research labs & units
  • Institutionally – Departments, Centres, Institutes, Interdisciplinary orgs, etc.
  • Provincially – Clinical academic campuses, regional centres, etc.
  • Regionally – WestGrid, Compute Ontario, Calcul Quebec, ACENET
  • Nationally – Compute Canada, CANARIE, etc.
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WHERE DOES FUNDING FOR ARC COME FROM?

  • The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
  • British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund (BCKDF)
  • Other granting organizations (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC)
  • Institutions – Universities, Centres, Institutes, etc.
  • Charities, Donations, Private Partners & Commercial Partnerships
  • Government of Canada Budget 2018 ~$572M investment in DRI
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WESTGRID: PAST AND PRESENT

  • WestGrid is a regional consortia of ARC providers and innovators in western Canada
  • Born from MACI, circa 2001
  • Funding from CFI
  • Member institutions from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia
  • Recently incorporated as a non-profit
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COMPUTE CANADA: PAST AND PRESENT

  • Compute Canada is a non-profit organization and national provider of DRI in Canada
  • Formed circa 2006 as consortia of HPC consortiums with funding from CFI and NSERC
  • Compute Canada is a consortia of regional partners (WestGrid, Compute Ontario,

Calcul Québec and ACENET)

  • Arbutus launched in 2016, followed by Cedar and Graham in 2017 and Niagara in 2018
  • ~35 member institutions, ~200 “staff”
  • New Interim CEO as of February 2018, Robbin Tourangeau
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NATIONAL ARC SITES IN CANADA

  • University of Victoria (BC) – Arbutus (7640 cores, ~78TB RAM, 500TB)
  • Simon Fraser University (BC) – Cedar (58416 cores, 584 GPUs, ~312TB RAM, ~15PB HDD)
  • University of Waterloo (Ontario) – Graham (32530 cores, 320 GPUs, ~170TB RAM, ? HDD)
  • University of Toronto (Ontario) – Niagara (60000 cores, ~280TB RAM, ~10PB HDD)
  • École de Technologie Supérieure (Quebec) – Béluga (RFP out now!)
  • Sick Kids Hospital (Ontario) – HPC4Health (~7000 cores)
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COMPUTE CANADA: ELEVATOR PITCH

  • National service
  • Four National systems available today (more coming)
  • Available to all academic researchers in Canada free of charge
  • Rapid Access Service (RAS) for immediate access
  • Resource Allocation Competition (RAC) for annual allocations of significant resources
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WESTGRID & COMPUTE CANADA: THE FUTURE

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ARC HAPPENS IN…

LABS, INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNMENT FACILITIES

Photo Credit: Adult Swim Photo Credit: Comedy Central Photo Credit: The WB

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ARC & RESEARCHER ENGAGEMENT

WHAT’S UP (AT UBC), DOC?

Photo Credit: Warner Bros.

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THE UBC ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING MODEL

  • Institutionally dedicated free-of-charge service to the UBC research community
  • Domain-specific expertise in Life Sciences, Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, Data

Management, Security and Privacy, Systems Administration, etc.

  • Pre and post-award consultations – Specifically CFI but others also welcome
  • Multi-campus presence (local staff at both UBC Point Grey and UBC Okanagan)
  • Collaborate with Regional and National partners
  • Collaborate with local IT providers, including Central IT, Faculty IT, Dept IT, Lab IT, etc.
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UBC ADVANCED RESEARCH COMPUTING INITIATIVES

  • Pursuing local investments in Digital Research Infrastructure at UBC – Very Exciting!
  • Expanding the Advanced Research Computing team
  • Extensible High Performance Computing platform at UBC
  • Hosting the WestGrid HPC Summer School @ UBC June 11-14 2018
  • Compute Canada Canadian Bioinformatics Help Desk
  • Broad community engagement
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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

NEED SOME MORE ARC IN YOUR LIFE?

Photo Credit: DHX Media

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NATIONAL & REGIONAL RESOURCES

  • Compute Canada – https://computecanada.ca
  • WestGrid – https://westgrid.ca
  • The Canada Foundation for Innovation – https://innovation.ca
  • LCDRI – https://digitalleadership.ca
  • Government of Canada Budget 2018 – https://www.budget.gc.ca
  • Canada’s new Superclusters – http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/093.nsf/eng/00008.html
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LOCAL RESOURCES

  • UBC Advanced Research Computing – https://arc.ubc.ca
  • SFU Research Computing Group – http://www.rcgsfu.ca
  • Research Computing at Uvic - https://www.uvic.ca/systems/support/researchcomputing/
  • Talk to your VP Research Office or Office of Research Services
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