SC’20 Virtual — A Super Supercomputing Re-cap
By: Alces Flight
Tags: AWS, Hpc, Conference, Supercomputer

SC’20 Virtual — A Super Supercomputing Re-cap

Virtual Supercomputing may have come to an end but thanks to this event being held entirely online the content will be running live for the next six months! Here’s a quick run-down (with links!) of what the crew got up to this time:

First-time nomination for the HPCwire Reader’s Choice Awards

We were proud to secure a first-time nomination with the University of Liverpool and AWS for work done in Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. We might not have taken home the prize this time but the research done to achieve this recognition in progressing COVID-19 diagnosis means everyone wins.

We made the HPC State of Practice — TWICE.

We were thrilled when they announced that not one, but two of our talk submissions to SC’20 were accepted into the State of Practice. Set into two sessions we were able to collaborate with a full range of speakers from the University of Liverpool & AWS for the HPC in the Cloud and with UCL and the University of Sheffield for HPC in Training. Both talks gathered over 550 attendees for the live sessions and are now available for replay.

Alces Flight supported SEVEN first-time authors at Supercomputing.

One of the benefits of being virtual is that this year our talks were able to feature a broad range of speakers and participants. We are thrilled that seven of those authors were first-time Supercomputing presenters hailing from computer research and medical backgrounds. We want to thank the session leaders for letting these presenters shine and we’re looking forward to seeing more of their work at Supercomputing conferences to come!

The first unfederated Alces Flight HPC cluster environment is unveiled.

The nUCLeus cluster is an unfederated HPC cluster environment designed specifically for the CompBioMed Center of Excellence. This scalable public cloud environment was designed, built and tested specifically for biomedical training and will be a key component in the exascale training starting in 2021. What makes this cluster environment so unique is that it belongs to the entire CompBioMed consortia and can be adapted to mimic on-site partner resources or modified for performance and optimisation of a specific application. All of this is managed through Alces Flight Center so that no detail on what the environment is, was, or should be is lost.

Alces Flight supports Women in HPC’s 11th Annual Workshop

This was our third time live tweeting a WHPC Supercomputing workshop. Their 11th event annual event was held on November 11th and featured over 20 speakers logging in from all over the world. Covering mentorship, careers, technical projects, and sage advice attending this workshop continues to be a must for anyone in or considering a move to the field. Many of these talks are uplifting and worth more than one listen — especially the two keynotes! Thanks again to WHPC for allowing us to be your social media voice.

The Flight Managed Barkla HPC Cluster continues to be ahead of the curve.

Finally, we are so pleased that the Flight Managed Barkla HPC Cluster at the University of Liverpool has continued to remain one of the most progressively designed and run HPC clusters in the world. The work of Barkla’s on-premises and cloud build has spent two years being recognised at Supercomputing for the impacts it has made in progressing the field. First, in 2019 for creating the Cloud Barkla mission-critical HPC cluster environment and again this year through it’s work in helping progress the diagnosis of COVID-19. We can’t wait to see what the Advanced Research Computing team dreams up in 2021.