Birds of a Feather session Arm Research Summit 2019
- 0-25min: Introductory presentations by Session leaders
- 25-35min: Discussion topic selection and break into discussion groups
- 35-75min: Discussions (with 5 min break at halfway point)
- 75-90min: Feedback from discussion groups to all attendees
- Post-BoF (by end Nov 2019): Produce blog articles on each discussion topic and action lists for each discussion topic.
- Identify key areas of interest from researchers and HPC professionals in development of Arm technology for research using HPC.
- Provide a better understanding of the challenges in delivering research HPC systems based on Arm technology.
- Develop action plans to address the challenges identified.
- Bring the worldwide Arm HPC community together to address the challenges identified.
- Michele Weiland, EPCC, The University of Edinburgh
- Simon McIntosh-Smith, University of Bristol
- Simon Burbidge, University of Bristol
- Thomas Kappas, University of Leicester
- Darren Cepulis, Arm
- Jay Kruemke, SUSE
We expect all participants to follow the Carpentries Code of Conduct in their interactions with other participants. Any form or behaviour to exclude, intimidate, or cause discomfort is a violation of the Code of Conduct. In summary:
- Use welcoming and inclusive language
- Be respectful of different viewpoints and experiences
- Gracefully accept constructive criticism
- Focus on what is best for the community
- Show courtesy and respect towards other community members
The UK is playing a leading role in developing and championing the use of Arm technology for research using high performance computing. It is home to four HPC systems based on Arm technology: the Isambard system, a Cray XC50 provided by the GW4 consortium; and three Catalyst systems, HPE Apollo 70 systems one hosted by each of EPCC at The University of Edinburgh, The University of Leicester and The University of Bristol. All of these initiatives around Arm-based HPC have been very outward-looking and collaborative in approach and we wish to continue this approach with the worldwide Arm community.
This BoF will provide a brief update on the status of the use of Arm technology for HPC in the UK; however, the bulk of the session will provide time for attendees to come together to discuss and plan the next steps in developing the use of Arm technology in HPC for research.
The goals of the UK-Arm HPC BoF are to:
- Identify key areas of interest from researchers and HPC professionals in development of Arm technology for research using HPC.
- Provide a better understanding of the challenges in delivering research HPC systems based on Arm technology.
- Develop action plans to address the challenges identified.
- Bring the worldwide Arm HPC community together to address the challenges identified.
The particular topics that will be addressed by the BoF will be determined by the interests and expertise of the attendees at the session. Example topics could include: extracting best performance from research software on Arm HPC platforms, implementing parallel file systems using Arm-based technology, understanding interconnect and parallel library performance, functionality and performance of numerical and scientific software libraries, porting data science frameworks in Python and R to Arm-based HPC systems.
Outputs from the session will be written up as a technical report detailing the discussions and their outputs and a number of blog articles summarising the topics and plans for addressing the challenges identified by attendees.
The 90 minute BoF will begin with five short presentations (5 min each) on challenges identified by the UK Arm HPC community to set the scene for the rest of the session and to introduce the session facilitators. These presentations will be presented by the session leaders.
Following the presentations, we will use the Slido online tool to allow BoF attendees to propose and vote on topics for the discussion sessions. A maximum of five topics with the most interest will be chosen for discussion. The list of potential topics will be pre-seeded with ideas from the UK Arm HPC community.
For each discussion topic, we will assign a facilitator and scribe and attendees will break into a groups for each topic. The discussion groups will be tasked with identifying challenges in their topic, proposing how the challenges could be addressed, describing the resources required to implement their proposals and assigning the actions needed to take their proposals forward. We will have a 5 minute break halfway through the discussion session to allow attendees to swap groups if they have interest in more than one topic.
The BoF will finish with 5 min of feedback from each discussion group on the challenges they identified to the wider group of all attendees.
After the BoF, we will produce a report describing the discussions, challenges, proposals, resources required and follow-on actions and publish blog articles on each discussion topic and the BoF itself.