HPCS 2013 - Visualization everywhere???

Visualization was pretty prominent at HPCS in general this year. I think we all know the only way to make sense out of complex data, in particular "big data", is to use visualization in some form. Almost all speakers at the conference talked about visualization on one form or another...

I took the WestGrid Visualization Roadshow on tour to HPCS 2013 this week. Held a day long workshop on Monday, teaching introductory Paraview. Good attendance and lots of interest...

Also chaired a Visualization BOF on Tuesday. Again, pretty good turnout, with most of the interest around how to support visualization effectively. The problem at most Compute Canada sites is that there is no dedicated support person for visualization. Visualization support, like any support, takes time - and most analysts support visualization off the side of their desk.  Not sure how to change that without money, people, and commitment from above...

I also did a couple of ad-hoc remote visualization demonstrations at HPCS as well - people were interested in seeing how well it worked. Nothing like a demo without planning, but it all worked. Connected the GPU nodes on parallel.westgrid.ca to my laptop, via wireless, in Ottawa. Remote visualization worked very well - I think we might have some remote visualization users from the East on parallel soon 8-)

HPCS 2013 - Ottawa

Attending the HPCS 2013 conference in Ottawa, lots of interesting talks with a focus on the importance of big data in science and the community. One of the most interesting was from the CIO from the City of Chicago, talking about their open data initiative. Check out this map to see an example of their open data interface (Crime Data from 2012). Very impressive.

Other very interesting talks on the computation and data in weather predicition, high energy physics, astronomy, brain imaging, and next generation genomics. Interesting thing is that although these research projects are "data intensive" in many of them the data is prediceted to grow significantly in the future. Look out when the Square Kilometer Array comes on line!!!

Check out the HPCS 2013 program for details...

Cyberinfrastructure services for the long tail of science BOF

A BOF to discuss infrastructure for Small to Medium Sized Labs (SMLs), the equivalent of the SME in the business world. Ian Foster cites [???] stating that 80% of NSF funding is given through grants of < $350K. SMLs struggle to meet their IT needs. The big question, how can cyberinfrastructure meet the needs of this research community.

Jim Myers - RPI talks about the SEAD CI infrastructure project in the support of sustainability research. Looks quite interesting in terms of managing data in a Flickr/social network style interface... Surprise, surprise, people like it when the tools are easy to use and not draconian...

Carl Kesselman - USC talks about the data life cycle and mechanisms for sharing data. Suggests that long tail research data is often VERY messy and ad hoc with meta-data encoded in odd ways (file path). Manage data through tagging data files, allowing searches to find data of interest... User's publish data files and subscribe to data files of interest. Back end is a DropBox style capability.

Ian Foster - ANL talks about Globus Online as a resource for managing data.

Great discussion after the speakers finished presenting... A huge need and lots of interesting opportunities!!! Institute for Enabling Long Tail Research web site at https://sites.google.com/site/ieltrconcept/home

Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) BOF - Catching Up!!!

Attended the SAGE BOF and caught up with EVL/GLVF colleagues... As usual, SAGE users/reserarchers are doing interesting and exciting things... A couple of interesting observations:

• SAGE usage continues to grow (~25% per year over the last four years).
• Interesting CAVE-2 system - Large surround screen LCD tiled display. Combining features of tiled display wall world of SAGE with the immersive 3D world of a VR system.
• Heard about CAL-VR a couple times at the conference (Kaust immersive display, also in the EVL CAVE-2 system). Might be worth looking at for the IQStation.
• SAGE-NEXT is a SAGE system for a single computer that drives a large tiled display wall (8K x 2K). Sometimes has trouble pushing the pixels but is much simpler than the typical cluster based system.
• GenoSAGE - a visualization system for genome visualization. Sound interesting, need to follow up with Luc to see what kind of tools they are using.

Ultrascale Vis Workshop - Towards Exascale

Ken Moreland from Sandia National Lab presents an interesting talk about the challenges of visualization in the exascale world. Really, a talk about the challenges of exascale in general, using visualization as a case study in how we might tackle exascale. Too much concurrency (too many processors/cores/threads), and therefore too much overhead, on all levels... Libraries from National Labs (DAX, PISTON) are moving towards tackling these problems...

On the road again... SC 2012 in Salt Lake City

Annual adventure to SC, in Salt Lake City this year, is underway. Salt Lake City is a winter wonderland on arrival. No impact for my flight, but others had issues...

SC2011 - Seattle

Annual pilgrimage to SC currently underway. This year a large presence for WestGrid in the Compute Canada booth, with an IQStation running 3D demos for the week. Spend the first three days setting up the hardware and software with WestGrid colleagues... A bit of a job, but demo was ready to go for the Gala Opening last night. Had lots of interest at the Gala opening with many people interested in the demos...