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2025 RP Forum BoF Information

2025 RP Forum BoF Information

BoF - Node to Joy: Finding the Right Compute Resources

 

RP Representatives 

Jeremy Fischer - Jetstream2 IU - jeremy@iu.edu
Carol Song - Anvil - cxsong@purdue.edu
Nikolay Simakov - Ookami - nikolays@buffalo.edu
Sergiu Sanielevici - Bridges 2 - sergiu@psc.edu
Paola Buitrago - NeoCortex - paola@psc.edu
Honggao Liu - ACES & FASTER TAMU - honggao@tamu.edu
Virginia Trueheart - TACC - vtrueheart@tacc.utexas.edu
Jim Griffioen - KyRIC - griff@uky.edu
Brett Bode - Delta and DeltaAI - brett@illinois.edu
Sean Cleveland - SGX3 - seanbc@hawaii.edu

[and other RPs to be named later]

Slide example and template:

  • (Template version)

Abstract

In this session, the ACCESS Resource providers (RP) will give a brief overview of the available resources and their unique characteristics. The presentation portion of this BoF will highlight the variety of available resources and will be followed by a discussion with the community, allowing the audience to directly interact with the RP representatives. We hope to seed the discussion with topics but allow attendees to steer the discussion, perhaps uncovering topics not suggested here.

 

Long description

ACCESS (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support) [1] utilizes a network of human and technical resources to pair researchers with the appropriate resources for their research and education computational needs. researchers and educators can submit allocation requests to ACCESS and exchange their credits for appropriate service units at ACCESS-aligned resources (e.g. core and node hours, GPU hours, storage) when awarded.

These resources are provided by ACCESS Resource Providers (RPs).  Each RP received their own National Science Foundation award(s) to provide particular research and education systems and support to the national cyberinfrastructure via coordination with ACCESS. The resource providers offer a wide range of cyberinfrastructure assets available for use. Some of the many resources in the ACCESS portfolio include: 

  • Traditional high-performance computing clusters utilizing batch schedulers

  • Cloud resources where researchers can launch and run virtual machines and containerized workloads.

  • Storage resources for storing and managing large amounts of data for processing

  • Testbeds offering new computing capabilities

  • Scientific support to help researchers and educators use these resources

In this BoF session, various RPs will give a brief overview of their unique resources. ACCESS Allocation staff will also give a brief overview of the ACCESS allocation process. Representatives from ACCESS will be present at the BoF to answer any audience questions about this process. They will highlight the characteristics of the systems and services. This session encourages participants to have open and unscripted conversations. The panel will keep their system remarks brief and encourage those attending to steer the discussion, perhaps uncovering topics not suggested here.

After the presentations, the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss with the RP representatives. This can include a discussion about each resource's characteristics, how to choose the right resource for a specific task, how to easily transition from their campus or desktop compute platforms to these resources, roadmap discussions, as well as time for answering any other questions the community brings up.

We encourage people to submit questions, topics they are interested in, and any other feedback before the session. Please use following link for this BoF PEARC25 Etherpad

 

Suggested “seed” questions

These questions are meant to start the conversation. They will not be used to steer the conversation unless no other questions are being asked. The priority is to address questions from attendees and foster conversations.

  • How do we ease the process of getting researchers and students onto ACCESS-allocated resources and help them be productive quickly?

  • What kinds of application software are to be accepted on these machines?

  • What kinds of resources and services are available to support hosting of shared datasets?

  • What would be most helpful for researchers and educators that are new to national CI resources?

  • What sort of resources are missing from the national CI? What needs are not being addressed well?

 

Session format

We will introduce the BoF organizers/facilitators and then start the RP resource presentation - allowing for up to 2 minutes per RP. This will comprise approximately 20-30 minutes of the event and the remainder of the time will be dedicated to fostering discussions and interactions between all participants. The team will gather topics from attendees to continue the conversation and identify opportunities for future joint discussions.

If sessions longer than an hour are available, we would advocate for making this BoF 75-90 minutes for maximum impact and benefit to the user community. 

Given previous attendance, having a large space for this BoF would be recommended and appreciated. 

 

Prospective attendees

This BoF will engage cyberinfrastructure professionals, campus HPC consultants, researchers, educators, and students who may need to use computation, cloud, and storage resources to further their research and education goals. 

 

Sustaining the conversation

This session will provide attendees the opportunity to share contact information with each other. Participants who are interested in signing up for allocations may be able to do so at the end of the BoF. We hope to continue the conversation asynchronously, identify future opportunities to meet, and recruit key interested persons who will sustain the discussion.

 

Recent offerings

This BoF session took place for the first time at Supercomputing 2023. It was attended by around 100 people and very well received by the community. A follow-up event was hosted at PEARC24 and filled a large room and was standing room only several minutes into the event. We estimated attendees around 70+. There was excellent participation from those who attended and the feedback was very positive. 

As PEARC grows in size and scope and ACCESS resources become broader, continuing this BoF would be of benefit to the community. This BoF has the intent of lowering the walls between RPs and the researchers and educators they serve, allowing for unfettered conversations. 

 

A/V Requirements

This BoF requests a projector and screen so that the organizers can first display slides on the various resources being discussed and then display a real-time collaborative editor (such as Etherpad) for participants to build notes. The organizers will supply their own laptop. Mics will be needed for speakers and questions from the audience. 

References

ACCESS - Home - Access - Home - Access

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