This year is the last allocation year for Magnus before its users are switched to the whopping new 50-petabyte Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) computer.

A snapshot of Magnus’s last dance

Almost sixty-percent of Magnus’s system allocation is through open calls. This means any researcher from any Australian University can apply to use our Magnus through the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme or the Energy and Resources Scheme.

But before Magnus shuts down for good, here’s a look at some of the incredible projects it is helping researchers tackle this year.

Cleaner combustion

A University of New South Wales team is using Magnus to search for more efficient ways to harvest renewable energy. The team uses Magnus to simulate how atoms collide during combustion. This will help engineers make more powerful next-generation engines that run on new, renewable fuels. The particles that lead to energy in solar cells also use combustion dynamics, so the research will help engineers build better solar panels for green energy.

The team, led by Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Evatt Hawkes, has been using Magnus for renewable energy research since 2016. In 2018, the team received $1.2 million in ARC grants to study particle flow and gas compression ignition engines, leading to less harmful health impacts from these engine types. Their current project, simulating particle collisions in 3D space, will use over 14 million core hours on Magnus this year.

A new gold standard

CSIRO Mineral Resources is partnered with Pawsey to discover the origin of gold deposits beneath Australia’s soil. The project, led by CSIRO geochemist, Dr Yuan Mei, studies how gold molecules are transported through ore fluids. The current theories of how gold deposits are formed predict that hydrothermal fluids – liquids heated by the Earth’s interior – carry gold molecules to form deposits. But these theories have been upended by recent research into gold ore and exotic fluids like carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Yuan’s work with Magnus models the flow of gold through fluids, to understand how these gold deposits are really formed. This work will give Australian geologists a better idea of where to find rich new gold seams. The large-scale calculations of these fluid dynamics have been run over three years, using almost 8 million core hours on Magnus.

Go with the flow

Australia is a land famously girt by sea. From the coast to the deep ocean, nutrients from marine life are carried along by the currents. These nutrients are collected by aquatic vegetation. University of Western Australia’s Oceans Graduate School is simulating how these underwater seagrass meadows and coral reefs collect nutrients. Professor Ryan Lowe heads the research team. He uses Magnus to simulate how vegetation uses ocean flows to capture nutrient particles. The project also features high-resolution simulation of marine ecosystems from Ningaloo, Pilbara and Kimberley ocean regions. The project ranges from small simulations of less than one cubic metre, to challenging large-scale coastal simulations spanning up to 1000 metres. Ryan utilised Magnus since 2016 and will use more than 10 million core hours this year. By simulating these flows, Ryan can inform conservationists on how changing weather conditions and climates will affect our vulnerable marine life.

 Direct drug design

The Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute (CHIRI) is working with Pawsey to design better methods of drug delivery. CHIRI’s Biomolecular Modelling Group is using Magnus to create large-scale computer models of molecules found within the body, such as cell membranes and proteins. By understanding the properties of these molecules, the team is helping drug manufacturers find new ways to target specific areas of the body. This work will improve fast and slow-release medicines, cancer treatments and other localised health problems. It will also simulate natural chemical reactions within the body, giving researchers a better understanding of cancer evolution and neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The Biomolecular Modelling Group is led by Professor Ricardo Mancera and has been a Pawsey partner for more than 5 years. Through the “Large scale molecular dynamics simulations of macrobiomolecular complexes” project the group will use more than 10 million core hours this year.

Future

Pawsey is dedicated to providing supercomputer access to Australia’s researchers. If you have a project that require large scale supercomputing resources or consultation, please consider applying for next year allocation on the new Setonix supercomputer.

For details on how to apply visit our website. For open calls, we accept grant allocations from the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme and the Pawsey Energy and Resources Scheme.

Magnus: A Truly Team Effort

Through all the years of operations, Magnus would not be possible without an effort of the current Pawsey team, Pawsey alumni and collaboration with researchers. Magnus has been host to staff, community tours, national and international guests. Though Magnus will be decommissioned this year, its impact and engagement won’t be forgotten.

The post Magnus’ last dance appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

The HPE Cray EX supercomputer will be 30 times more powerful than Pawsey’s existing systems, Magnus and Galaxy, and will be used to help accelerate research projects such as the Square Kilometre Array.

Pawsey Centre Executive Director Mark Stickells says the name Setonix was chosen as a nod to the unique marsupial, which has become both a WA icon and a global tourist attraction.

“Pawsey has long had an affinity with the quokka — one of our existing systems was used by UWA Associate Professor Parwinder Kaur to map the quokka genome as part of an international conservation effort,” Mr Stickells said.

“The quokka is an iconic Western Australian animal that has helped promote our State to the world, just as our work at Pawsey helps raise the profile of Western Australian and Australian researchers on the world stage.

“We also have a close connection with Rottnest Island, with our systems used to model ocean surface currents and sea temperature around the island — important work for oceanographers as well as for events such as the Rottnest Island Swim.

“Selecting Setonix as the name for our new supercomputer recognises our pride in being a national supercomputing facility located in WA, and the work we do in enabling science and accelerating discovery.”

Setonix marks a step change in Pawsey’s supercomputing firepower, which currently supports the work of more than 1600 researchers from its Kensington facility.

From discovering new galaxies to developing improved diagnostic tests for coronaviruses, Pawsey’s high-performance facilities are already being used to solve some of the most important research questions in the world.

Setonix is so powerful its computing power is described in petaFLOPS, representing the number of floating point operations that can be conducted per second.

To match what a one petaFLOPS computer system can do in just one second, you would have to perform one calculation every second for 31,688,765 years.

The existing supercomputers at the Pawsey Centre, Magnus and Galaxy together have 1.83 petaFLOPS of raw compute power.

Setonix will deliver 50 petaFLOPS of power, enough to keep you busy calculating for 1.5 billion years just to match what it can do in an instant.

“Supercomputers divide big problems into smaller problems that can be solved at the same time — known as parallel processing,” Mr Stickells explained.

“Our existing flagship system capacity is equivalent to about 33,000 PCs working in parallel, so a problem that would take almost a year for a single computer to solve working step by step takes our current system about 12 minutes.

“Setonix will be 30 times more powerful than that.”

Setonix will be delivered in two stages, with the first stage, due later this year, immediately increasing the computing power of the centre by 45 per cent. Phase two will be available by the middle of next year.

The system has been designed to give Australian researchers an edge in emerging research fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“On delivery, this will be the fastest public research supercomputer in Australia, potentially the Southern Hemisphere, and it is an enormous leap forward for Australian research,” Mr Stickells said.

“Setonix will help researchers around the world manage the data collected through the Square Kilometre Array. It will support our role as part of the international consortia helping advance COVID research.

“It will help us better understand climate change, the warming of oceans, the genomics of plants that can tolerate drought — or, the genome of a furry little marsupial on a remote island in WA.

“It is a project that underscores WA’s importance to international scientific collaboration.”

More details of Setonix can be found here and updated information about the Capital Refresh process is available on this link.

Photo Credits to the Rottnest Island Authority

The post Pawsey unveils its super-fast tribute to the quokka appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

Annually, this 10-week intensive internship program selects students to delve deeper into their scientific areas through high-performance computing.

Students are supervised by project leads on their respective projects, which range from geophysical use of HPC, atomic and molecular photon collisions and interfaces; GPU-based and accelerated research; metageonics, molecular dynamics,  quantum combinatorial optimisation, particle transport simulations, phenotyping in HPC, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity; optimised machine learning for genomics and visualisation through sleep datasets.

For the first time, these students are being supported by dedicated mentors – Edric Matwiejew and Tarun Bonu. These mentors are previous Pawsey Interns who have showcased excellence in their fields and are now passing on their knowledge to the next group of Pawsey Interns.

To learn more about the students, mentors and their projects, read their dedicated profiles on Pawsey’s Facebook page.

Projects this year come from institutions across Australia including Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, Murdoch University, RMIT, Data61, Curtin University, University of Technology Sydney, The University of Western Australia, the Australian National University, Monash University.

With the internships ending in February, the students have been tasked to present their work as posters during the first Pawsey Friday of 2021. Registration details will be announced in early 2021.

Visit Pawsey’s Facebook page to learn more about each student, the studies they are undertaking and their internships.

The post Ending 2020 with 23 bright interns appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

Using ASKAP at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in outback Western Australia, the survey team observed 83 per cent of the entire sky. The initial results are published today in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

This record-breaking result proves that an all-sky survey can be done in weeks rather than years, opening new opportunities for discovery.

Using software specially created for ASKAP by CSIRO and Pawsey’s Galaxy supercomputer, the newly created map of the Universe was completed in just 300 hours, showcasing approximately three million galaxies – about a million of which we’ve never seen before.

There were 903 fields, each with 36 beams, that needed to be calibrated and have images made and catalogues constructed only possible with the large amount of computational capability available at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

Pawsey is an integral part of the ASKAP observatory. The raw data from the telescope is streamed down to the Centre in almost real-time.

The Pawsey supercomputers and CSIRO software were fundamentally required to produce the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). Using a radio telescope, the RACS team processed the ‘raw’ data from the telescope to reconstruct an image using the software ‘ASKAPsoft’, designed to produce science-ready images from ASKAP data using the advanced image processing techniques,

RACS data is freely available to the public and the astronomy community via the CSIRO data portal CASDA.

This census of the Universe will be used by astronomers around the world to explore the unknown and study everything from star formation to how galaxies and their super-massive black holes evolve and interact.

Bringing together world-class infrastructure with scientific and engineering expertise ASKAP is helping unlock the deepest secrets of the Universe.

Read the full story on the CSIRO website.

The post New atlas of the Universe appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

In 2020, NCI and Pawsey have dealt with major challenges impacting the country, our user base, and operations. Most significantly, these include the bushfires that ravaged the country over the summer, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the difficulties that closed national and state borders have created. However, we are used to operating in complex environments, separated by the width of a continent and servicing a growing pool of extremely diverse researchers. NCI and Pawsey support its user communities: from the biggest international research projects to exciting local science happening in universities and research institutes around the country.

This year marked the start of a renewal period for Australian HPC: NCI commissioned and fully launched the 9.3 Petaflop Gadi supercomputer at number 24 on the July 2020 TOP500 list, and Pawsey completed the tender process for their own next-generation supercomputer, due to be delivered between 2021 and 2022; reaching an impressive 50 Petaflops. Both machines include a significant number of GPUs, increased core counts, and the latest generations of CPUs and networking technologies. NCI has opted for the Intel CPU-Nvidia GPU combination and Pawsey will be procuring an AMD CPU-GPU system.

The technologies and performance on offer to Australian researchers has taken a major leap forward this year, and look to keep improving in the not too distant future. All stand in support of the research goals of the Australian scientific community – most notably in the areas of astronomy, and climate and weather science. The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is the processing hub for the Terabytes of data already flowing in from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) precursor telescopes;  the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescopes in the West Australian Murchison desert. The data volumes will grow at an unprecedented level over the next decade, and Pawsey with its specially optimised system will be the home for the initial processing of this data.

Similarly on the east coast, NCI continues its role as the Australian home for the internationally significant climatology datasets. These datasets contain climate and weather data covering the past few decades, as well as model outputs around future climate out past 2100. Coupling Australian science input into global climate decision-making, the CMIP6 data and the associated processing and analysis it requires all live at NCI.

As the world continues to struggle through a deadly pandemic and changing climate, we were proud this year to join our COVID-19 research efforts with those of a growing collaboration of US and international HPC centres through the COVID-19 HPC Consortium. This kind of global collaboration shows that our scientific potential increases when infrastructure facilities come together, and with a united front, respond, as one, to a major crisis. Research teams around the world are sharing data and expertise in their quest to fight this pandemic.

In the Asia-Pacific region, NCI and Pawsey can together play a leadership role as the local computational community grows. We are already regularly partnering with centres such as NSCC in Singapore and NeSI in New Zealand for conferences, events and training. Out of this relationship came the Women in HPC Australasia Chapter, a local extension of WHPC providing community and mentoring to women and gender diverse people in the field.

In 2021, the global HPC community will need to continue to collaborate across borders, time zones and disciplines. The online conferences that have replaced the in-person meetings we are so used to will certainly remain for the foreseeable future.

As computational science and novel data analysis methods become even more common place, NCI and Pawsey will continue to be the strategic partners of choice for our ever-expanding community of users.

The post HPC Australia SC20 Update: National centres support critical research with next-generation supercomputers appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre has today opened a call for submissions for a new program that will provide training and support for Australia’s research community, to prepare researchers for the next era of supercomputing and help them to deliver outcomes that benefit the nation.

Pawsey Centre for Extreme scale Readiness (PaCER) program will enable researchers to take full advantage of its new HPE Cray 50PFlops supercomputer, which will be 30 times faster than its current systems – Magnus and Galaxy – and is expected to be fully commissioned by 2022.

Dr Maciej Cytowski, Pawsey’s Head of Scientific Services, said that this program is a long-term collaboration that will benefit its participants as much as it will the broader research community.

“PaCER is not just another allocation scheme; it is a partnership for collaboration between researchers and Pawsey’s supercomputing specialists.

Scientific problem to be solved on next-generation supercomputing that would have been unachievable with the current systems will be considered a grand challenge.

This collaboration will serve as a foundation for achieving extreme performance on next-generation supercomputers to unlock science and achieve previously unavailable scales,” said Dr Cytowski.

Grand challenge problems will be enabled by PaCER through algorithms design, code optimisation, application and workflow readiness.

Dr Amanda Barnard, Senior Professor of Computational Science at The Australian National University and Chair of Pawsey’s Capital Refresh User Reference Group, welcomed PaCER with optimism and recognised the challenge that new technologies represent to scientific breakthroughs.

“The new Pawsey supercomputer, its scale and technology, does not come without its own challenges, and new computer science is needed to maximise its impact. New programming paradigms are emerging, and traditional algorithms must be completely rewritten in order to take full advantage of the machine,” Dr Barnard said.

“The Pawsey Supercomputer Centre and Australian researchers now need research about HPC, not just research using HPC, just as they do at the top international supercomputing centres.”

The PaCER scheme presents an opportunity for researchers to become exascale ready and will future-proof Australia’s computational science for years to come.

Through PaCER, researchers will optimise their codes and workflows for next-generation supercomputers. It is designed as a minimum three-year partnership for collaboration with Pawsey and high-performance computing vendors.

Successful applicants will be granted early access to supercomputing tools and infrastructure, training and exclusive hackathons focused on high-performance computing at scale.

PaCER is based on a collaborative model involving co-funding of doctoral or postdoctoral positions, presentations at relevant events and joint publication opportunities with the researchers.

Joint proposals involving several research groups that can benefit from the proposed computational approach are encouraged.

Each application will be assessed on its research significance and track record, as well as the collaboration and co-investment proposal, its alignment with the National Science and Research priorities and its technical scope.

Successful applicants will be selected by the PaCER committee responsible for conducting a fair review and selection process; they will be announced early in 2021.

Ugo Varetto, Pawsey’s Chief Technology Officer, referring to the importance of the program to achieve extreme scalability in the new Pawsey system, said:

“To exploit extreme scalability on the new system applications are required to implement optimal data movement pipelines and algorithms able to run concurrently on both CPUs and accelerators, making use of modern programming models.

“Learning and applying such techniques and features is the focus of the PaCER program.”

For more information and to apply visit here: https://pawsey.org.au/pacer/

Pawsey will be hosting an AskMeAnything event on Monday 2 November to present about the program and answer relevant questions to participants. To register to the event please visit here: https://pawsey.org.au/event/pawsey-hour-ask-me-anything-16/

The post Pawsey launches new partnering program to achieve HPC research at scale appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

The initiative, a collaboration between Monash University, Australasian eResearch Organisations (AeRO), NCI Australia, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, and New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, was announced at the eResearch Australasia (eResAU) Conference 2020.

“I’m thrilled to be announcing the Australasian Chapter of Women in HPC and the formalisation of what was already a growing community,” says Sam Moskwa, AeRO CEO. “It is not a group just for women but also allies and we want to be inclusive of diversity beyond gender.”

“This year has shown us that workplace culture can change overnight as businesses quickly embrace flexible hours and work from home arrangements in response to COVID19. So we should expect the same pace of change as we strive to create a more inclusive workplace.”

The Chapter’s launch comes on the anniversary of the idea being first brainstormed at last year’s eResAU conference, sparked by 2019’s theme of diversity in eResearch.

Initial goals of the Australasian Chapter include:

• identifying opportunities and future activities to improve diversity, inclusion, balance and belonging in HPC and eResearch
• increasing the engagement of women in HPC
• increasing the number of women in HPC
• fostering collaboration and connections amongst existing diversity and inclusion initiatives

All members of the Australian and New Zealand HPC and eResearch communities are invited to attend an online kickoff event on 11 November, 11:30am AWST / 2:30pm AEDT / 4:30pm NZDT, to coincide with WHPC Diversity and Inclusion day at SC20. For more details and to register, click here.

Review our 3min video on Why the WHPC Australasian Chapter is important or view the longer 8min version.

The post Women in HPC (WHPC) Forms New Australasian Chapter appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

Pawsey’s new system will be built using the HPE Cray EX supercomputer, with expanded data storage capabilities through the Cray ClusterStor E1000 system, significantly increased compute power and more emphasis on accelerators with future-generation AMD EPYC™ CPUs and AMD Instinct™ GPUs.

The new supercomputer will be at least 10 times more energy efficient than its predecessors Magnus and Galaxy. For the 30-fold increase in computing power, Pawsey expects the new system’s energy requirements will only increase by 50 per cent once the system is fully commissioned.

Today, more than 1,600 researchers use Pawsey’s supercomputers directly to support their computing-intensive projects, including discovering new galaxies, developing improved diagnostic tests for coronaviruses, and finding AI-enabled ways to reduce herbicide use.

Mark Stickells, Director of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, said the new system will help propel the position of Australian research on the global stage.

“Supercomputers like those at Pawsey are increasingly crucial to our ability to conduct world-class, high-impact research. The upgrades we’re announcing are a critical move in strengthening Australia’s position in the global research environment and playing a part in major global research projects, from helping in the fight against COVID-19 to working with the precursor telescopes to the Square Kilometre Array,” he said.

“The new supercomputer will not only deliver next generation compute power to meet these growing requirements, it will enable entirely new research projects with global reach and impact.”

John Langoulant, Chairman of the Board at Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, echoed the impact of the new supercomputer for the state, the country, and the world.

“Today’s supercomputer upgrade will significantly boost the national effort, elevating the role of Australian research on the global stage and creating opportunities for new high-impact research that benefits Western Australia, the nation and the world,” he said.

The new supercomputer will help meet the exponentially increasing computing needs of Australian researchers in fields such as medicine, artificial intelligence, radio astronomy and more.

Dr Chenoa Tremblay, Postdoctoral Fellow in Dark Magnetism at CSIRO, is using Pawsey’s existing supercomputing systems to analyse extremely sensitive radio telescope signals that could give us our first potential evidence of life outside our solar system. Her team’s work requires scanning more than ten million stars and analysing hundreds of terabytes of data, a herculean task that will be accelerated with the new supercomputer.

“Doing this on my laptop would take 25 years,” Dr Tremblay said. “Pawsey’s supercomputing systems have brought some of our research timelines from years down to days, giving us the power we need to analyse hundreds of thousands of images quickly. With the signals being very weak, finding new ones will require even more data to crunch.”

HPE was selected as the preferred vendor under a $48 million agreement following a thorough tender process led by Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, the centre agent for Pawsey, based on energy efficiency, cost, and HPE’s integrated hardware and software solution.

“Scientific breakthroughs made by leading research centres, such as Pawsey Supercomputer Centre, inspire us to continue empowering the community with powerful supercomputing solutions that combat the broadest range of challenges,” said Nick Gorga, General Manager, HPC and AI, APAC-India at HPE.

“We look forward to collaborating with AMD to build Pawsey the most powerful system for their region and boost Australia’s research capabilities to advance missions from understanding human viruses to discovering new galaxies.”

The new supercomputer is part of Pawsey’s Capital Refresh Program, which is being delivered under a $70 million grant from the Australian Government announced in 2018 to upgrade Pawsey’s supercomputing infrastructure. This is in addition to the $80 million granted in 2009 to establish the petascale supercomputing facility.

To learn more about the Capital Refresh Program, visit https://pawsey.org.au/about-us/capital-refresh/

The post Powering the next generation of Australian research with HPE appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

VOTING HAS STARTED!

Remember, HPCwire readers who actively vote during the elections will decide the winners. It’s an honor and a privilege for us to present these awards, but we can’t do it without your active participation. Make your voice heard before it’s too late!

Polls are open for the HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards, and is set to run until October 12th, 2020 at 11:59 PM PT (Tuesday 13 October, 2.59PM AWST).

Have fun and good luck to everyone!

Click here to vote!

Congratulations to Pawsey researcher nominees –

• Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences: Dr. Andrew Hung – Turning toxins into treatments
• Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences: Dr. Paula Moohuijzen & Dr Caroline Moffat – Fighting Fungus: Using Genomics to Combat Wheat Diseases
• Best Use of HPC in Response to Societal Plights (COVID-19 focused research/programs): NCI & Pawsey – COVID-19 Accelerated Access Initiatives
• Best Use of High Performance Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence: Dr. Gretchen Benedix – Crater Counting

Click here to vote!

The post HPCwire Readers’ Choice Awards nominees appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

The National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS) is the premier allocation scheme for access to Australian national supercomputing facilities for meritorious research.

The NCMAS provides access, based on research and computational merit, for researchers at Australian universities and publicly funded research agencies. For the 2021 round over 350 Million service units will be available

The 2021 round will allocate time for researchers on NCI Australia’s Gadi, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre’s Magnus, The University of Queensland FlashLite and The Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment (MASSIVE).

In the upcoming round, NCMAS is proud to participate in the Office of the Women in STEM Ambassador’s National Trial of Anonymising Grant Proposals.

This study will examine the effects of anonymised review in assessment of funding and resource proposals in reducing unconscious gender bias in grant proposals.

This research project will provide important data on the effectiveness of anonymising proposals to improve equity. The results will provide a strong evidence base to inform government and the STEM sector to take action on processes that are more equitable in future.

Applications remain open until 26 October 2020.

Further information and the application: https://ncmas.nci.org.au

The post NCMAS 2021 Call open for applications appeared first on Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.