Executive Summary
In February 2013, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Science and
Innovation team, together with Research Councils UK (RCUK), organized a
delegation of High Performance Computing (HPC) experts from the UK to visit the
USA to (1) identify areas and mechanisms for collaboration between the UK and
USA; and (2) identify lessons the UK could learn from the USA HPC community -
especially with regard to engagement with industry and the software challenge.
This report presents the findings of that delegation, including recommendations
for action, along with a summary of the visits and meetings occurring during
the week.
UK-USA
Consensus on Key Issues
Before describing the findings on collaboration and lessons learnt, it
is worth highlighting some common themes emerging from the week, upon which
there is strong agreement between the practitioners in the UK and USA:
A. Effective
High Performance Computing cannot be delivered by hardware alone –
indeed the highest impact benefits to research, industry and the economy will
come from HPC related innovations in the software applications.
B. Development
of HPC skilled people is required to achieve the optimum economic and research
impact from HPC. There are two aspects to this: (i) radically
expand the numbers of researchers and businesses aware of HPC; (ii) a
substantial program of development of HPC skilled researchers and HPC
practitioners. It is widely agreed that
the country that gains leadership in these human aspects of HPC will enjoy a
significant competitive advantage in the economic benefits of HPC exploitation.
C. Significant
economic benefit can be gained from effective engagement between industrial users
of HPC and centres of HPC expertise - including academic centres (e.g. Oxford
e-Research Centre, OeRC), publicly funded laboratories (e.g. the Hartree
Centre), and UK commercial providers of HPC expertise (e.g. NAG Ltd.).
UK-USA
Collaboration
The delegation considered the mechanisms and opportunities to
improving collaboration between the UK and USA in the area of HPC, focusing
primarily on academic collaborations. The delegation found that:
D.
There are many existing UK-USA collaborations
(such as the G8 Exascale initiative) and established mechanisms - e.g. with the
US National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Energy (DOE), and
others.
RECOMMENDATION
1: RCUK should better promote these existing collaborative routes, especially
within all relevant call documents.
E.
Concrete projects are needed to foster true
collaboration, rather than just overall desires to collaborate.
RECOMMENDATION
2: RCUK should find a way to use the established international links of the
UK’s key HPC organisations (i.e. Hartree, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre,
NAG, …) to support computational researchers to develop specific
collaborations.
F.
This visit was deemed to be successful but only
covered the north eastern parts of the USA – there are significant centres of HPC
activity elsewhere across the USA.
RECOMMENDATION
3: Follow-up visits (ideally with the same team) should be arranged to other
parts of the USA, notably the southern central states, and the west coast.
Lessons
from the USA HPC Community
The delegation considered what lessons the UK HPC community could
learn from the USA HPC community. The delegation found that:
G.
The NSF has operated an industry engagement
scheme (not HPC specific) for around 25 years. The Industry-University
Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC) program has several aspects that UK
funding agencies and academic centres could learn from.
RECOMMENDATION
4: RCUK should review the NSF I/UCRC program for elements to adopt in the UK.
H.
Matching the experience of the UK, the USA HPC
community has learnt that getting the best science from HPC requires a greater
focus on stable long term funding for skilled HPC practitioners in addition to
the hardware systems.
RECOMMENDATION
5: The UK should explore how to establish and expand stable long term funding
for HPC expertise in the UK.
I.
Effectively engagement between centres of HPC
expertise and industry users is beneficial to both parties, but is also
difficult to get right. Ensuring the maximum benefit for industry requires a
specific focus to the engagement by the HPC expertise provider, which can often
represent a culture challenge for academic providers. It is also important for
industry to be able to access variety of providers, technologies and expertise.
RECOMMENDATION
6: BIS should undertake an independent review of the full and diverse set of UK
providers of HPC expertise/facilities involved in HPC industry engagement and
how to best use these (including Hartree, HECToR/ARCHER, the regional
e-infrastructure centres, NAG Ltd., etc.).
J.
The USA has deployed several novel HPC
architectures in anticipation of future technology directions and/or emerging
user communities – e.g. the systems at Pittsburgh.
RECOMMENDATION
7: RCUK should review the roles of the various novel HPC facilities (including
the Emerald GPU system, those at the Hartree Centre, and others) with a view to
ensuring the UK computational research community is best prepared to exploit
future technologies.
END
Authors:
Gerard Gorman, Imperial College
London (Editor)
Mike Ashworth, STFC Daresbury
Laboratory
Andrew Jones, Numerical
Algorithms Group Ltd. (NAG)
Lee Margetts, University of
Manchester
Andrew Richards, University of
Oxford
