InHPC-DE Project to Further Integrate the GCS Centres

The three GCS centres – High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, Garching near Munich, (LRZ) – have started an initiative that aims to expand the existing close cooperation of the three national high-performance computing (HPC) sites. The InHPC-DE project aims to unite the three national HPC centres into one integrated national HPC ecosystem, in turn creating the foundation of a homogeneous yet distributed HPC concept for Germany’s Tier-1 computing facilities and technologies as well as its world-class HPC services and support.

At the heart of this initiative is a high-speed 100 Gbit/s network, based on DFN’s X-WiN and BelWü, to interlink the three centres nationwide, enabling an easy and fast, cross-organizational transfer of the massive amounts of data resulting from the large-scale computing runs. This extremely fast network will support distributed workflows, including post processing, and allow for collaborative, remote visualization. Equally important will be the implementation of a distributed yet integrated data management system spread across the three centres.

By fostering a tighter technical integration of the GCS centres, InHPC-DE will complement the ongoing SiVeGCS project, which is mainly focused on the provision of national (Tier-1) and European (Tier-0) HPC services. The latter project also aims to provide unified, peer-review-based access to these services and a revamp of the user support structure to include not only HPC support specialists, but also application experts. With the aid of a contact person specialized in their various science domains, researchers using GCS resources can collaborate more closely with the respective centres and have someone available to help solve specific computing challenges in the researchers’ respective areas of study.

Under the umbrella of GCS, the three national centres will maintain their status as closely coordinated, highly aligned HPC centres. The technical and conceptual investments involved with the InHPC-DE project lay the foundation for Germany’s "Smart Scaling" initiative, in which an advanced support structure and integrated computing ecosystem will lead to scientists being able to successfully leverage ever-increasing computing capabilities on the path towards exascale computing.
(Contact: Dr. Thomas Eickermann, th.eickermann@fz-juelich.de)

from JSC News No. 255, January 2018