Infrastructure planning
The HPC/A Lab documents current demand and forecasts future demand by the scientific computing working groups and candidates for professorial appointment at the University of Bonn, factoring these estimated capacity requirements into overall strategic planning.
In addition to planning, the Lab plays an active supporting role in specific procurement decisions and in further development of the shared infrastructure, in cooperation with the HPC team of the University Computer Centre and in institutional collaboration.
Intermediary role
The HPC/A Lab serves as link or ‘translator,’ as it were, between the scientific community, with its principally method-related concerns, and the more technical world of high-performance system operation.
The HPC/A Lab provides information on the web pages of the HPC/A Forum, maintains Forum mailing lists and co-organizes meetings, actively promoting dialog between researchers and tech administrators.
The HPC/A Lab reviews requests for central high-performance computing capacity and adjusts the allocatable capacity in view of any issues currently affecting the assignment of computing time contingents.
Advising
The HPC/A Lab provides field-specific methodological advice to scientific researchers and consults on the development and provision of algorithms and tools.
The HPC/A Lab also provides advice of a fundamental nature on what systems and solutions are available or suitable, on modalities of deployment and accessing, and serves as intermediary whenever possible to arrange access to high-performance systems or assist with filing computing capacity requests on higher tier levels.
Early-career researchers
The HPC/A Lab holds educational and training events for students and researchers, providing specifically prepared content (wikis, tutorials, etc.).
The HPC/A Lab is also involved in the BNTrAinee program for artificial intelligence as another of its key activities promoting the interests and advancement of early-career researchers.
The HPC/A Lab also keeps researchers informed about other available workshops and courses and provides additional useful content in the high-performance computing context.
Projects
The HPC/A Lab actively engages in third-party funded research projects, such as:- hpc.nrw , the Competence Network for High-Performance Computing of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, funded by DH.NRW
- The SFB DETECT, supported by the the German Research Foundation
- BNTrAInee, a transdisciplinary training program in the field of artificial intelligence funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
- The SFB NuMeriQS, supported by the German Research Foundation
- development and maintenance of the tmLQCD lattice QCD software suite, supported by the German Research Foundation
