The RISC2 project participated at the Latin America High-Performance Computing Conference (CARLA 2021), which took place between September 27 and October 15, 2021, with 888 registered attendees from 25 different countries. The consortium of the RISC2 project participated in the organization of several activities during this international conference, within the scope of the collaboration between Europe and Latin America communities, working on HPC-related topics.
CARLA is an international conference aimed at providing a forum to foster the growth and strength of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) community in Latin America through the exchange and dissemination of new ideas, techniques, and research in HPC and its applications areas. The general chair of the 2021 edition is Isidoro Gitler, from Cinvestav, who coordinates and participates in all the event’s activities.
Workshops
Different partners of the RISC2 were involved in the organization of the scientific workshops as part of the CARLA 2021 conference. Between seven workshops organized to this conference, two of them are from the RISC2 consortium. The workshop on HPC Collaboration between Europe and Latin America took place online, on October 5, 2021. The goal was to provide a space dedicated to exchange experiences, towards the promotion and support of new collaborations across different countries of Europe and Latin America, within the framework of the recently launched ‘A network for supporting the coordination of High-Performance Computing research between Europe and Latin America’ (RISC2). This workshop achieved a maximum number of 55 participants, with Pedro Vieira Alberto, from the University of Coimbra, as one of the Invited Speakers. Ulisses Cortés, from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, presented the RISC2 project, as an example of HPC collaboration between Europe and Latin America. The chairs of this event were Ulisses Cortés and Rafael Mayo-García, from CIEMAT.
Another workshop organized by the RISC2 team was the workshop on HPC an Energy, which was held online on October 4, with Álvaro Coutinho, from COPPE, as Chair. This workshop focused on HPC techniques applied to the energy sector, in order to improve and reform many industrial sectors. HPC can provide several solutions to the energy sector, e.g., oil and gas solutions in upstream, midstream, and downstream problems; improve wind energy performance; solve issues of combustion efficiency for transportation systems; making nuclear systems more efficient and safer; improving solar energy systems; optimizing wind energy systems; improving the quality and efficiency of seismic and geophysical simulations, etc.
It is important to mention that Ginés Guerrero, from NLHPC, was one of the chairs of workshops organized by CARLA 2021.
Tutorials
Carla Osthoff, from Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica, was Tutorial Chair Member of the 11 tutorials that were accepted at the CARLA 2021. CARLA 2021 provided tutorials and hands-on workshops for both introductory and advanced levels, specifically designed to undergraduate and master students all over Latin- American countries. There were two different periods: Fundamental Tutorials, which included six different tutorials the week before CARLA 2021, and Advanced Tutorials, with five different tutorials held a week after CARLA 2021. CARLA 2021 Tutorials were supported by Latin American, Caribbean, and European institutions.
Esteban Mosckos, from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, was involved in the organization of two different tutorials: “OpenMP: Introduction to shared memory models” and “Introduction to Distributed Memory Models using MPI”. Both activities consisted of theory and hands-on exercises, lasting four hours, with close to 40 assistants each.
The NLHPC partner was also responsible for a tutorial focused on Working with a resource manager on an HPC infrastructure, for the use of SLURM. Two more tutorials were organized by NLHPC, including, the tutorial on Performance Analysis Tools, with the participation of one of the members of the NLHPC Scientific Committee, and the other on Quantum Computing, with the participation of IBM.
The CARLA 2021 conference had more than 30 institutions on the board committee and more than 115 in attendance, connected simultaneously.
All the videos are available here.