{"id":1504,"date":"2018-08-20T11:46:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T10:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/computing-services\/?p=1504"},"modified":"2020-12-16T12:48:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T12:48:38","slug":"7th-annual-hpc-symposium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/2018\/08\/20\/7th-annual-hpc-symposium\/","title":{"rendered":"7th Annual HPC Symposium"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 7th<\/sup> Annual HPC Symposium took place on Wednesday 6th<\/sup> June 2018.\u00a0 This year\u2019s event saw the largest number of\u00a0attendees\u00a0from across the University representing the ever\u00a0growing user base of Balena,\u00a0the University's HPC service<\/a>.\u00a0 Ten contributed talks and ten posters\u00a0were complemented with\u00a0keynote talks,\u00a0three external\u00a0and one internal, from Prof. Tina Duren.\u00a0 Coupled with the intimate setting for this year's event encouraging discussion with poster presenters the pervading feedback\u00a0was that this one the best in the series bringing together researchers from across disciplines in a way that few University events achieve.<\/p>\n

Prof. Steve Parker, Chemistry, and Chair of the HPC Management Group, welcomed attendees talked about the events of the past year.\u00a0\u00a0The recent investment in Balena provides\u00a0new compute nodes with latest Skylake processors, as well\u00a0as enhanced GPUs with 7 NVIDIA P100 GPUs\u00a0and\u00a0additional\u00a0storage.\u00a0\u00a0Alongside\u00a0the imminent delivery of the GW4\u00a0Tier-2 HPC, Isambard, these are exciting times for HPC users at Bath.\u00a0 Researchers in the EPSRC's remit\u00a0can also access the other machines that make up the Tier-2 network.\u00a0 Additionally the appointment of a Research Software Engineer\u00a0will support research software development and provide training across the University.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Institute for Mathematical Innovation<\/a> (IMI) had Machine Learning as their semester theme which lead to\u00a0the decision to\u00a0 dedicate a session and keynotes to the subject at this year's\u00a0Symposium.\u00a0 We were grateful to its Director\u00a0Prof Jon Dawes to introduce the IMI's work and our\u00a0keynotes.\u00a0\u00a0Dr Timothy Lanfear of\u00a0NVIDIA talked about current and emerging GPU devices.\u00a0 These are well known for their applications in Machine Learning but are also widely\u00a0used in molecular simulation.\u00a0 \u00a0This was followed by an excellent talk from Prof. Giovanni Montana, University of Warwick and Co-I on the Oxford led Tier-2 HPC, Jade based on NVIDIA GPUs.\u00a0 Giovanni's recent work has focussed on using Machine Learning in bio-imaging, but has found wide-ranging application including interpreting and making\u00a0prognoses.<\/p>\n

After\u00a0a brief pause for coffee we were back in the machine learning world for a series of\u00a0talks from researchers at Bath.\u00a0\u00a0Dr Ellen Murphy is a Commercial Research Associate in the IMI and spoke about her project analysing hip X-ray images.\u00a0 Hip fractures represent a huge cost to the NHS >\u00a31Bn per year but more significantly, high fatality rates.\u00a0 The\u00a0work is not only helping to process images but also improve classification of fractures by collating data across NHS Trusts.\u00a0\u00a0Gordon Rennie, from Computer Science\u00a0also gave a fascinating talk about his work on reinforcement learning which underlies Google recent announcements on AI.\u00a0 \u00a0 While he plans to use it to fly UAVs, the video of\u00a0an AI body flailing its way through a virtual obstacle will live long in the memory.<\/p>\n

After a\u00a0lunch poring over posters,\u00a0we had a talks from students in Biology and Biochemistry,\u00a0Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, alongside Tina Duren's overview of the work of her group.\u00a0 The talks introduced a range of the\u00a0molecular simulation that goes on at Bath as well in the case of visualising large datasets, the capability that a central service such as\u00a0Balena offers users.\u00a0 \u00a0Most significantly this session consisted entirely of female presenters.\u00a0 Diversity in research remains an issue and this is increases\u00a0in heavily computational work that relies upon HPC so it was encouraging to have a strong\u00a0representation at the symposium.<\/p>\n

The last\u00a0session of the day saw talks from researchers from Maths and Physics.\u00a0 While each of the talks introduced the\u00a0complex\u00a0maths and algorithms underpinning their work, the speakers did an excellent job of making the methods of their\u00a0subjects accessible to a general audience.\u00a0 For the final\u00a0talk and keynote\u00a0of the day\u00a0we welcomed Jess Jones, Cray UK\u00a0Ltd, and\u00a0former student at Bath and administrator of Balena's predecessor Aquila.\u00a0 Jess\u00a0talked us through the conception and delivery of a Cray\u00a0supercomputer,\u00a0illustrated by the MetOffice\u2019s current entries in the TOP500.\u00a0\u00a0With Isambard about to be installed\u00a0the same hall it was great to see the attention\u00a0that go into each of their machines.<\/p>\n

The day ended with the prize presentations.\u00a0 Given the impact that computers and technology have had on research practice, particularly in computational research, it is remarkable how little the output has changed.\u00a0 Certainly talks have become more colourful, but papers and traditional\u00a0posters have changed little.\u00a0 \u00a0But this is changing ... the interest\u00a0generated by\u00a0Jack Betteridge, Maths,\u00a0as visitors swiped their way through his research made him a worthy prize winner\u00a0for his interactive\u00a0poster.\u00a0\u00a0Dan Davies, CSCT, won a prize for his talk on his research which uses machine learning for the high throughput screening of potential solar cell materials and Megan Stalker won the prize for best overall contribution for her talk on investigating the potential of using cellulose to store hydrogen.<\/p>\n

\"Prize<\/a>
HPC Symposium winners 2018 (Jack Betteridge, Megan Stalker and Dan Davies)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The day has capped by a reception with drinks and pizza together with further discussion.\u00a0 One topic that arose on a couple of occasions was that the Symposium wasn\u2019t HPC enough, that is it was about the worked that use Balena rather than more practical talks on how to get the best out of HPC.\u00a0 As a result we are considering introducing a complementary event consisting of workshops and more practical talks to next year\u2019s symposium.\u00a0 If this is something that interests you and you would like to attend contribute to please get in touch (r.j.grant@bath.ac.uk<\/a> or hpc-support@bath.ac.uk<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Many thanks to all attendees of this year\u2019s event, the keynotes, speakers, poster presenters and session chairs.\u00a0 Thanks also to hospitality for keeping us going with food and coffee, to Clustervision, suppliers of Balena, who provided the prize for best overall contribution and to co-organisers Dr Gael Donval, Chemical Engineering and Dr Jonathan Skelton, Chemistry for their hard work organising this year\u2019s event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 7th Annual HPC Symposium took place on Wednesday 6th June 2018.\u00a0 This year\u2019s event saw the largest number of\u00a0attendees\u00a0from across the University representing the ever\u00a0growing user base of Balena,\u00a0the University's HPC service.\u00a0 Ten contributed talks and ten posters\u00a0were complemented...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":1519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[494,86,6,435,87],"class_list":["post-1504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arc","category-hpc","tag-494","tag-high-performance-computing","tag-hpc","tag-hpc-symposium","tag-symposium"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4PAv-og","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/arc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}