Category Archives: Quantum Computing

In this bimonthly feature,HPCwirehighlights newly published research in the high-performance computing community and related domains. From parallel programming to exascale to quantum computing, the details are here.

Developing a performance model-based predictor for parallel applications on the cloud

As cloud computing becomes an increasingly viable alternative to on-premises HPC, researchers are turning their eyes to addressing latency and unreliability issues in cloud HPC environments. These researchers a duo from the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology and Benha University propose a predictor for the execution time of MPI-based cloud HPC applications, finding an 88% accuracy on ten benchmarks.

Authors: Abdallah Saad and Ahmed El-Mahdy.

Investigating portability, performance and maintenance tradeoffs in exascale systems

As the exascale era swiftly approaches, researchers are increasingly grappling with the difficult tradeoffs between major system priorities that will be demanded by such massive systems. These researchers a team from the University of Macedonia explore these tradeoffs through a case study measuring the effect of runtime optimizations on code maintainability.

Authors: Elvira-Maria Arvanitou, Apostolos Ampatzoglou, Nikolaos Nikolaidis, Aggeliki-Agathi Tzintzira, Areti Ampatzoglou and Alexander Chatzigeorgiou.

Moving toward a globally acknowledged HPC certification

Skillsets are incredibly important in the HPC world, but certification is far from uniform. This paper, written by a team from four universities in the UK and Germany, describes the HPC Certification Forum: an effort to categorize, define and examine competencies expected from proficient HPC practitioners. The authors describe the first two years of the community-led forum and outline plans for the first officially supported certificate in the second half of 2020.

Authors: Julian Kunkel, Weronika Filinger, Christian Meesters and Anja Gerbes.

Uncovering the hidden cityscape of ancient Hermione with HPC

In this paper, a team of researchers from the Digital Archaeology Laboratory at Lund University describe how they used a combination of HPC and integrated digital methods to uncover the ancient cityscape of Hermione, Greece. Using drones, laser scanning and modeling techniques, they fed their inputs into an HPC system, where they rendered a fully 3D representation of the citys landscape.

Authors: Giacomo Landeschi, Stefan Lindgren, Henrik Gerding, Alcestis Papadimitriou and Jenny Wallensten.

Examining thermal neutrons threat to supercomputers

Off-the-shelf devices are performant, efficient and cheap, making them popular choices for HPC and other compute-intensive fields. However, the cheap boron used in these devices makes them susceptible to thermal neutrons, which these authors (a team from Brazil, the UK and Los Alamos National Laboratory) contend pose a serious threat to those devices reliability. The authors examine RAM, GPUs, accelerators, an FPGA and more, tinkering with variables that affect the thermal neutron flux and measuring the threat posed by the neutrons under various conditions.

Authors: Daniel Oliveira, Sean Blanchard, Nathan DeBardeleben, Fernando Fernandes dos Santos, Gabriel Piscoya Dvila, Philippe Navaux, Andrea Favalli, Opale Schappert, Stephen Wender, Carlo Cazzaniga, Christopher Frost and Paolo Rech.

Deploying scientific AI networks at petaflop scale on HPC systems with containers

The computational demands of AI and ML systems are rapidly increasing in the scientific research sphere. These authors a duo from LRZ and CERN discuss the complications surrounding the deployment of ML frameworks on large-scale, secure HPC systems. They highlight a case study deployment of a convolutional neural network with petaflop performance on an HPC system.

Authors: David Brayford and Sofia Vallecorsa.

Running a high-performance simulation of a spiking neural network on GPUs

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are the most commonly used computational model for neuroscience and neuromorphic computing, but simulations of SNNs on GPUs have imperfectly represented the networks, leading to performance and behavior shortfalls. These authors from Tsinghua University propose a series of technical approaches to more accurately representing SNNs on GPUs, including a code generation framework for high-performance simulations.

Authors: Peng Qu, Youhui Zhang, Xiang Fei and Weimin Zheng.

Do you know about research that should be included in next months list? If so, send us an email at[emailprotected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

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What's New in HPC Research: Hermione, Thermal Neutrons, Certifications & More - HPCwire

Exponential change is happening in the world around us and within governments.Since the main goal for governments is to serve their citizens, promote well-being, influence positive societal change, and enhance their public services, they need to build a strategy to address all challenges and opportunities. As we move to the new era of public services, we observe new priorities on the agenda appearing, e. g. strengthening the economy, managing and minimizing unemployment impact on society, solidifying and protecting digital assets, and ensuring intelligent management of national data assets to improve analytic reporting and predictive capabilities drastically. It is imperative for governments to embrace this new standard, redefine strategies that will break information silos to empower government employees to prioritize issues and opportunities, and design citizen-centric services and experiences. And the right technology is key to bringing that mission into a rapidly changing, digital world.

The first digital event in the Government Industry created by Microsoft Government Virtual Summit will open future perspectives on how digital agility can provide resilient and agile public services. Microsoft Public Sector experts Panayiotis Ioannou and Evangelos Chrysafidis will cover the importance of tech-intensity philosophy in responding to changes, perspectives for growth, and setting Modern Government foundations. They will explain how to engage and connect with citizens, modernize the government workplace, and enhance government services.

Intelligent cloud and intelligent edge solutions make possible technology transformation that is unlocking new mission scenarios for government agencies that were not possible before. They make it possible to provide consistent power to critical institutions like hospitals and schools, manage precious resources like energy, food, and water, as well as helping government improve citizen services comments Mykhaylo Shmyelov, Microsoft National Tech Officer for 24 countries in CEE. For the audience of the Summit, he will highlight top-preferred technologies in the Government industry, among which AI, Quantum Computing, Open Data, and Big Data.

When the whole world drastically moved online, one of the essential topics globally became cybersecurity. It was set as a priority for governments around the world, as they consider how to protect assets, systems, and networks vital to the operation and stability of a nation and the livelihood of its people. According to Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, in the last 30 days, more than 86 million devices have been encountered with various sorts of malware across the cities in most populated countries. Therefore, Microsoft Security expert Yoad Dvir will present how to enhance cybersecurity and protect critical information infrastructures that became essential to every nations security and economic well-being. Dr. Rytis Rainys, Director of the National Cyber Security Center Lithuania, Neboja Joki, the Head of CERT of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia, and Robert Kosla, Director of Department of Cybersecurity of the Ministry of the Digital Affairs of Poland, will share experiences and learnings on cybersecurity approaches.

International experience exchange will become the highlight of the event. Jnis Ziedi, Project Manager of Culture Information Systems Centre of Latvia, will share the experience of how the Ministry of Latvia is utilizing the national chatbot platform and offering cooperation to other governments on knowledge sharing and joint development. Masha Melkova, Microsoft Modern Workplace Lead for 24 countries in CEE, will illustrate the digital transformation of the Estonian government, one of the worlds best examples of e-government. Estonia started its digital transformation journey 20 years ago, starting from changing legislation and creating our first e-solutions. The idea is to make sure all public services involve as little bureaucracy as possible Melkova is underlining.

At the same time, when introducing new services, the government needs to upgrade employees skills to keep pace with changes. Governments that are investing in improving the skills of their employees are proved to be more resilient and future-ready. Dragana Jovi Tucakov, Microsoft Enterprise Marcom for 24 countries in CEE, will share useful resources that government entities can leverage already starting from now.

There is an excellent opportunity for governments and society to stay more connected than ever, despite the difficult times all of us have been going through. It is a time for learning from each other and sharing practices, experiences, and ideas. Microsoft stays committed to partnering with governments around the world and support based on local needs, bringing the best of the global practice.

Register now to join the first Microsoft Government Virtual Summit in CEE Multi-Country region, which is going to be delivered in English language. More information: https://info.microsoft.com/CE-DTGOV-WBNR-FY20-06Jun-16-GovernmentVirtualSummitCEEMultiCountryRegion-SRDEM25061_LP01Registration-ForminBody.html

Tags: Government, MultiCountry

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What is Modern Government: Opinion leaders from CEE will discuss the new approach to public services at the Government Virtual Summit - Microsoft

On May 19, 2020, Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9) introduced the Advancing Quantum Computing Act (AQCA), which would require the Secretary of Commerce to conduct a study on quantum computing. We cant depend on other countries . . . to guarantee American economic leadership, shield our stockpile of critical supplies, or secure the benefits of technological progress to our people, Representative Griffith explained. It is up to us to do that.

Quantum computers use the science underlying quantum mechanics to store data and perform computations. The properties of quantum mechanics are expected to enable such computers to outperform traditional computers on a multitude of metrics. As such, there are many promising applications, from simulating the behavior of matter to accelerating the development of artificial intelligence. Several companies have started exploring the use of quantum computing to develop new drugs, improve the performance of batteries, and optimize transit routing to minimize congestion.

In addition to the National Quantum Initiative Act passed in 2018, the introduction of AQCA represents another importantalbeit preliminarystep for Congress in helping to shape the growth and development of quantum computing in the United States. It signals Congresss continuing interest in developing a national strategy for the technology.

Overall, the AQCA would require the Secretary of Commerce to conduct the following four categories of studies related to the impact of quantum computing:

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House Introduces the Advancing Quantum Computing Act - Lexology

On this episode of the MarketScale Online Learning Minute, host Brian Runo dives into how quantum computing, the next revolutionary leap forward in computing, could apply to online education.

In particular, it can be used to epitomize the connectivism theory and provide personalized learning for each individual, as its not restricted by the capacity of an individual instructor.

In this way, each learner can be empowered to learn at their own pace and be presented with materials more tailored to them in real-time.

In fact, quantum computing is so revolutionary that the education world likely cant even currently dream up the innovations it will enable.

For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in theEducation Technology Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication.

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The Role of Quantum Computing in Online Education - MarketScale

In this bimonthly feature,HPCwirehighlights newly published research in the high-performance computing community and related domains. From parallel programming to exascale to quantum computing, the details are here.

Developing the HPC system for the ASKAP telescope

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope (itself a pilot project for the record-setting Square Kilometre Array planned for construction in the coming years) will enable highly sensitive radio astronomy that produces a tremendous amount of data. In this paper, researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) highlight how they are preparing a dedicated HPC platform, called ASKAPsoft, to handle the expected 5 PB/year of data produced by ASKAP.

Authors: Juan C. Guzman, Eric Bastholm, Wasim raja, Matthew Whiting, Daniel Mitchell, Stephen Ord and Max Voronkov.

Creating an open infrastructure for sharing and reusing HPC knowledge

In an expert field like HPC, institutional memory and information-sharing is crucial for maintaining and building on expertise but institutions often lack cohesive infrastructures to perpetuate that knowledge. These authors, a team from North Carolina State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, introduce OpenK, an open, ontology-based infrastructure aimed at facilitating the accumulation, sharing and reuse of HPC knowledge.

Authors: Yue Zhao, Xipeng Shen and Chunhua Liao.

Using high-performance data analysis to facilitate HPC-powered astrophysics

High-performance data analysis (HPDA) is an emerging tool for scientific disciplines like bioscience, climate science and security and now, its being used to prepare astrophysics research for exascale. In this paper, written by a team from the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, Italy, the authors discuss the ExaNeSt and EuroExa projects, which built a prototype of a low-power exascale facility for HPDA and astrophysics.

Authors: Giuliano Taffoni, David Goz, Luca Tornatore, Marco Frailis, Gianmarco Maggio and Fabio Pasian.

Using power analysis to identify HPC activity

Monitoring users on large computing platforms such as [HPC] and cloud computing systems, these authors a duo from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory write, is non-trivial. Users can (and have) abused access to HPC systems, they say, but process viewers and other monitoring tools can impose substantial overhead. To that end, they introduce a technique for identifying running programs with 97% accuracy using just the systems power consumption.

Authors: Bogdan Copos and Sein Peisert.

Building resilience and fault tolerance in HPC for numerical weather and climate prediction

In numerical weather and climate prediction (NWP), accuracy depends strongly on available computing power but the increasing number of cores in top systems is leading to a higher frequency of hardware and software failures for NWP simulations. This report (from researchers at eight different institutions) examines approaches for fault tolerance in numerical algorithms and system resilience in parallel simulations for those NWP tools.

Authors: Tommaso Benacchio, Luca Bonaventura, Mirco Altenbernd, Chris D. Cantwell, Peter D. Dben, Mike Gillard, Luc Giraud, Dominik Gddeke, Erwan Raffin, Keita Teranishi and Nils Wedi.

Pioneering the exascale era with astronomy

Another team this time, from SURF, a collaborative organization for Dutch research also investigated the intersection of astronomy and the exascale era. This paper, written by three researchers from SURF, highlights a new, OpenStack-based cloud infrastructure layer and Spider, a new addition to SURFs high-throughput data processing platform. The authors explore how these additions help to prepare the astronomical research community for the exascale era, in particular with regard to data-intensive experiments like the Square Kilometre Array.

Authors: J. B. R. Oonk, C. Schrijvers and Y. van den Berg.

Enabling EASEY deployment of containerized applications for future HPC systems

As the exascale era approaches, HPC systems are growing in complexity, improving performance but making the systems less accessible for new users. These authors a duo from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich propose a support framework for these future HPC architectures called EASEY (for Enable exAScale for EverYone) that can automatically deploy optimized container computations with negligible overhead[.]

Authors: Maximilian Hb and Dieter Kranzlmller.

Do you know about research that should be included in next months list? If so, send us an email at[emailprotected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

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What's New in HPC Research: Astronomy, Weather, Security & More - HPCwire

May 28, 2020 Under the direction of Michael Devetsikiotis, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), The University of New Mexico recently joined the IBM Q Hubat North Carolina State University as its first university member.

The NC State IBM Q Hub is a cloud-based quantum computing hub, one of six worldwide and the first in North America to be part of the globalIBM Q Network. This global network links national laboratories, tech startups, Fortune 500 companies, and research universities, providing access to IBMs largest quantum computing systems.

Mainstream computer processors inside our laptops, desktops, and smartphones manipulatebits, information that can only exist as either a 1 or a 0. In other words, the computers we are used to function through programming, which dictates a series of commands with choices restricted to yes/no or if this, then that.Quantum computers, on the other hand, process quantum bits or qubits, that are not restricted to a binary choice. Quantum computers can choose if this, then that or both through complex physics concepts such as quantum entanglement. This allows quantum computers to process information more quickly, and in unique ways compared to conventional computers.

Access to systems such as IBMs newly announced53 qubit processor (as well as several 20 qubit machines) is just one of the many benefits to UNMs participation in the IBM Q Hub when it comes to data analysis and algorithm development for quantum hardware. Quantum knowledge will only grow with time, and the IBM Q Hub will provide unique training and research opportunities for UNM faculty and student researchers for years to come.

How did this partnership come to be? Two years ago, a sort of call to arms was sent out among UNM quantum experts, saying now was the time for big ideas because federal support for quantum research was gaining traction. Devetsikiotis vision was to create a quantum ecosystem, one that could unite the foundational quantum research in physics atUNMsCenter for Quantum Information and Control(CQuIC) with new quantum computing and engineering initiatives for solving big real-world mathematical problems.

At first, I thought [quantum] was something for physicists, explains Devetsikiotis. But I realized its a great opportunity for the ECE department to develop real engineering solutions to these real-world problems.

CQuIC is the foundation of UNMs long-standing involvement in quantum research, resulting in participation in theNational Quantum Initiative(NQI) passed by Congress in 2018 to support multidisciplinary research and training in quantum information science. UNM has been a pioneer in quantum information science since the field emerged 25 years ago, as CQuIC Director Ivan Deutsch knows first-hand.

This is a very vibrant time in our field, moving from physics to broader activities, says Deutsch, and [Devetsikiotis] has seen this as a real growth area, connecting engineering with the existing strengths we have in the CQuIC.

With strategic support from the Office of the Vice President for Research, Devetsikiotis secured National Science Foundation funding to support a Quantum Computing & Information Science (QCIS) faculty fellow. The faculty member will join the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with the goal to unite well-established quantum research in physics with new quantum education and research initiatives in engineering. This includes membership in CQuIC and implementation of the IBM Q Hub program, as well as a partnership with Los Alamos National Lab for a Quantum Computing Summer School to develop new curricula, educational materials, and mentorship of next-generation quantum computing and information scientists.As part of the Q Hub at NC State, UNM gains access to IBMs largest quantum computing systems for commercial use cases and fundamental research. It also allows for the restructuring of existing quantum courses to be more hands-on and interdisciplinary than they have in the past, as well as the creation of new courses, a new masters degree program in QCIS, and a new university-wide Ph.D. concentration in QCIS that can be added to several departments including ECE, Computer Science, Physics and Astronomy, and Chemistry.

Theres been a lot of challenges, Devetsikiotis says, but there has also been a lot of good timing, and thankfully The University has provided support for us. UNM has solidified our seat at the quantum table and can now bring in the industrial side.

For additional graphics and full announcement, https://news.unm.edu/news/the-university-of-new-mexico-becomes-ibm-q-hubs-first-university-member

Source: Natalie Rogers, University of New Mexico

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The University of New Mexico Becomes IBM Q Hub's First University Member - HPCwire