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Developing NERC's High Performance Computing Strategy - Town meeting

JASMIN supercomputer

27 November 2018 (Tuesday)
One Park Crescent, London

 This event has now closed 

Exponential growth in the use of high performance computing (HPC) by environmental scientists is associated with increasing numbers of researchers carrying out simulations of natural phenomena to increasingly higher resolution, with entirely new environmental processes.

The research community needs to understand the consequential implications for HPC resource provision, feed them into national infrastructure developments, and deal with any constraints arising. Accordingly, NERC is developing an HPC strategy to embody community requirements and delivery aspirations.

As a first step to the development of the strategy, we organised a one-day community event to provide NERC with evidence and advice on the future direction of HPC provision in the environmental sciences community. The meeting included talks on supercomputing requirements from both NERC community and international invitees. An essential part of the meeting was the opportunity to provide input.

The meeting sought to understand:

  • Why is HPC fundamental to environmental research?
  • How much HPC does NERC need?
  • How should NERC deliver its HPC to the community?

Objectives

The goals of the workshop were to:

  • Engage the environmental science community in wider HPC policy.
  • Help develop NERC's strategy for HPC.
  • Identify the HPC capabilities needed to support environmental science into the future.

Workshop outputs

The results from the workshop will be collated into a report with the help of the working group, which will then be used by the newly formed HPC Strategy Committee to inform NERC's HPC strategy.

We see this as an important event to ensure both a NERC and a UK Research & Innovation understanding of the need for supercomputing in the environmental sciences.

How to attend

The closing date for registration was 20 November 2018.

Workshop details

A provisional agenda for the day is available below.

Workshop agenda (PDF, 66KB)

NERC paid travel costs associated with attendance.

Stephen Mobbs (NERC Director with HPC strategy responsibility)
Bryan Lawrence (Chair, NERC HPC strategy committee)
David Stevens (Chair, NERC HPC steering committee)

Contacts

For further information about this workshop, please contact:

Oliver Knevitt
Programme Manager, National Capability Commissioning

Kay Heuser
Programme Manager, National Capability Commissioning

Frances Collingborn
Head of High Performance Computing, National Capability Commissioning