DiRAC Technical Directorate

Call for applications to join the DiRAC Technical Directorate

The DiRAC Project Board invites applications for membership of the DiRAC Technical Directorate (TD) from June 2023. There is currently one vacant position on the TD.

The TD comprises between 3 and 5 senior members of the DiRAC community that have appropriate expertise in both scientific and technical domains. The Terms of Reference for the Directorate are included below (Annex 1).

Background:

The TD was established in early 2020 to carry out the activities previously associated with the role of DiRAC Technical Director, particularly in the areas of technical foresight, software benchmarking and advice to the DiRAC Director on technical strategy. The TD played a key role in the successful delivery of the DiRAC-3 Phase 1 deployments in 2020/21 and the nature of its remit in supporting the facility expanded as a result. This is reflected in the terms of reference.

Funding is available to support DiRAC Technical Directorate membership, at the level of 0.1 FTE per member and 0.15 FTE for each co-chair.

The current membership of the Technical Directorate is:

Alastair Basden (Durham; co-Chair)

Antonin Portelli (Edinburgh; co-Chair)

Biagio Lucini (Swansea)

Jeremy Yates (UCL)

1       Job description

The roles and responsibilities of members of the DiRAC Technical Directorate are:

  1. Attend virtual (1-hour) TD meetings regularly (currently fortnightly but usually monthly).
  2. Provide technical advice and information to the Director and other members of the DiRAC facility management team.
  3. Contribute to the development and writing of the DiRAC Technical Case, proposing a set of future service requirements to the DiRAC Project Board for adoption as the DiRAC technical plan for the next generation of services.
  4. Maintain up-to-date knowledge of future computing technology roadmaps and their relevance to DiRAC workflows.
  5. Identify potential opportunities for innovation activities with industry partners to enhance DiRAC preparedness to adopt appropriate new technologies.

2       Person specifications

Applicants should be able to demonstrate some or all of the following:

  • Proven record of HPC use in a DiRAC research domain;
  • Strong research record in a PPAN research area;
  • Knowledge of, and interest in, current HPC technology developments;
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills;
  • Engagement with the DiRAC research community;
  • Leadership of innovation or industrial engagement activities with HPC technology partners.

3       Funding

To support the above activities, funding of up to 0.1 FTE will be offered to members of the Technical Directorate during their tenure on the directorate.

4       Application process

4.1      Applications

To apply, applicants should submit a CV together with a brief statement on their suitability for membership of the DiRAC Technical Directorate, including their reasons for applying, their areas of HPC technical expertise/knowledge, the name(s) of two referees who would be willing to provide information to the panel on your previous experience in the areas of activity proposed for the directorate.

Statements should be no more than 2 sides of A4 and conform to the usual STFC regulations on style (font size, margins etc).

4.2      Closing date

Applications should be submitted electronically to the DiRAC Director (miw6@leicester.ac.uk) by 5pm on 7th June 2023.

4.3      Eligibility

All applicants must be eligible to work in the UK and currently based in the UK.

4.4      Assessment process:

The appointment panel will consist of Luigi del Debbio (Chair of DiRAC Project Board), Mark Hannam (Co-Chair of DiRAC Project Board), Mark Wilkinson (DiRAC Director) and representative(s) of the current TD membership.

Consideration of applications will begin on 8th June 2023. The appointment panel reserves the right to seek further applications after the closing date if no suitable applications are received by the closing date. The process will remain open until at a new TD member has been appointed.

All appointments will commence no later than 1st Oct 2023.

Unsuccessful candidates will be informed of the outcome of their applications by the later of June 28th or three weeks after their application is received (for applications submitted later than the 7th June closing date).

We welcome applications from everyone, particularly from those who have a protected characteristic as defined by the Equalities Act (2010), which provides the legal framework to tackle disadvantage and discrimination.  

These protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy and maternity.  

The application procedure for this position requires the submission of a CV and personal statement.   Please use these to bring to our attention anything we should know about e.g. disability or maternity, so that both the selection process and any subsequent employment can be reasonably adjusted to take account of anything you bring to our attention that you feel may disadvantage your application.

4.5      Additional information

Informal enquiries about this position on the Technical Directorate should be sent to the DiRAC Director, Mark Wilkinson (miw6@leicester.ac.uk).

Annex 1: DiRAC Technical Directorate Terms of Reference (Oct 2022)

Membership: Co-chairs; Director of Innovation & Technology; 1-3 additional DiRAC community experts.

Meetings: As required, at least monthly (currently fortnightly)

Roles and Responsibilities

  1. Provide technical advice and information to the Director and other members of the DiRAC facility management team.
  2. Lead the development and writing of the DiRAC Technical Case, proposing a set of future service requirements to the DiRAC Project Board for adoption as the DiRAC technical plan for the next generation of services.
  3. At least one representative to attend all TWG meetings.
  4. At least one representative at both Supercomputing and/or International Supercomputing events annually.
  5. Maintain up-to-date knowledge of future technology roadmaps and their relevance to DiRAC workflows through regular contact with HPC industry providers.
  6. Identify potential opportunities for innovation activities with industry partners to enhance DiRAC preparedness to adopt appropriate new technologies.
  7. Receive and discuss reports from Technical Manager(s).
  8. Approve allocations of the technical fund to support TWG activities.
  9. Develop and maintain DiRAC security policies.
  10. Provide oversight of maintenance of the technical risk register by the Technical Manager.
  11. Approve new innovation projects and re-prioritisation of technical activities.
  12. Approve procurement plans for any DiRAC service procurement.
  13. Establish a procurement oversight board (POB) for any DiRAC service procurement, with Technical Directorate representation at any POB meeting.
  14. Oversee the technical commissioning of any new service and manage the allocation of commissioning projects.
  15. Take and upload minutes to the DiRAC document repository for Technical Directorate meetings.
  16. Oversee development of DiRAC strategic technical roadmaps, e.g. software roadmap.
  17. Review plans from DiRAC Management for technical activities and make recommendations to the Project Board and/or DiRAC Management, e.g. DRI funding for DiRAC Federation projects.
  18. Oversee the benchmarking of DiRAC systems and codes prior to and during procurements for all DiRAC services
  19. The group will nominate a chair, or 2 co-chairs, who is/are responsible for ensuring that the group carries out its functions and that all reporting and technical case preparations are completed on time.
  20. The performance of the Technical Directorate is reviewed regularly by the DiRAC Project Board.

OpenMP with AMD GPU Hackathon – Itinerary

The hackathon is a 3-day event where most of the time will be spent on enhancing your project codes.

A 3-day pre-event training for all those that would like to attend will be as follows

Pre-event training 20th March

TimeTopic
13:00 – 13:10AMD Presentation Intro
13:10 – 13:20Brief Introduction to AMD Architecture
13:20 – 14:10Getting Started with OpenMP® Offload Applications on AMD Accelerators
14:10 – 14:40OpenMP® exercises
14:40 – 14:50Break
14:50 – 15:00OpenACC
15:00 – 16:00Advanced OpenMP® offloading
16:00 – 16:30Advanced OpenMP® Exercises
16:30 – 16:40Break
16:40 – 16:55Mixing HIP and OpenMP®
16:55 – 17:00Wrapup

Pre-event training 21st March

TimeTopic
13:00 – 13:30AMD Communication Fabrics and GPU-Aware MPI
13:30 – 13:45GPU Aware Exercises
13:45 – 14:00Break
14:00 – 14:40AMD Node Memory Model
14:40 – 15:00Memory Model Exercises
15:00 – 15:15Break
15:15 – 16:15Affinity — Placement, Ordering and Binding
16:15 – 16:40Affinity exercises
16:40 – 16:55Infinity Hub/HPC Community
16:55 – 17:00Wrapup

Pre-event training 22nd March

13:00 – 13:20Introduction to Rocprof
13:20 – 13:35Rocprof Exercises
13:35 – 14:00Introduction to Omnitrace
14:00 – 14:15Omnitrace Exercises
14:15 – 14:25Break
14:25 – 15:25Roofline
15:25 – 15:55Introduction to Omniperf
15:55 – 16:10Exercises – Omniperf
16:10 – 16:20Break

Extra

Intro to AMD Instinct Accelerators.mp4

Performance Analysis Workshop Series 2023

Performance Analysis Workshop Series 2023
20th April – 18th May 2023

With every new generation of computers, we see the gap between the theoretical performance of a machine and the performance that is actually delivered by applications widen. Codes struggle to exploit the hardware. It has therefore become critical that researchers and research software engineers in HPC to understand how well and why codes use the machinery as they do. Insight into performance behaviour can drive the code evolution and ultimately become the means through which future advancement through computing are facilitated.

This workshop series offers a comprehensive introduction to a selection of open source tools that enable researchers to assess the performance behaviour of their code. The workshops will be augmented by revision sessions of some of the core HPC know-how. We encourage participants to bring along their own codes so they can continually assess and improve them throughout the series.

For more information and to register, click here.

DPU Hackathon 2023

DPU Hackathon 2023

16/17 February 2023
Durham University, Department of Computer Science, Durham, UK (hybrid, in person preferred)
In collaboration with NVIDIA Networking

Durham’s Department of Computer Science, in collaboration with Durham’s DiRAC facilities and Durham’s ExCALIBUR H&ES installations, has organised a 1.5 day hackathon on how to use NVIDIA BlueField technology.

BlueField-empowered systems are supercomputers, where each individual networking card is equipped with additional ARM processors. These processors can, for example, take ownership of data movements between nodes, i.e. release the host from messaging-related work, manipulate message content while the messages fly through the network, own checkpointing,…

During the hybrid workshop, participants will first get a brief intro into BlueField technology, and can then try out prepared exercises on these machines. After that, we host a series of talks and brainstorming sessions on how this technology could enable next-generation simulation software. Finally, NVIDIA’s experts will be available to help with some prototyping of ideas on BlueField cards.

For more information and to register, click here.

Previous DiRAC Days

2018

TimeSpeakerTitle
09:00Simon Hands (Swansea)Welcome (pdf)
09:10Mark Wilkinson (Dirac)Director’s Report (pdf)
09:30Debora Sijacki (Cambridge)Simulating the most energetic events in the Universe (pdf)
10:00Jacek Dobaczewski (York)Computing Atomic Nuclei (pdf)
10:20Coffee
11:00David Wilson (TC Dublin)Hadron resonances from lattice QCD (pdf)
11:30Mark Hannam (Cardiff)How DiRAC helps us measure black holes (pdf)
12:00Vera Guelpers (Southampton)Lattice QCD calculations for high-precision tests of the Standard Model of particle physics (pdf)
12:30David Britton (Glasgow) /
Peter Clarke (Edinburgh)
GridPP (pdf) / IRIS (pdf)
13:00Lunch, (Room 218, Wallace Bulding)
14:30Parallel Sessions
17:00Poster Presentations, (Room 218, Wallace Bulding)
18:00Close

2019

TimeSessionLocation
9:00 – 9:30Welcome and Director’s reportOak Room
9:30 – 10:30Morning sessionOak Room
10:30 – 11:00Coffee
11:00 – 13:00Morning session (cont.)Oak Room
13:00 – 14:30Lunch
14:30 – 17:15Parallel Session 1Left hand side
of Oak Room
Parallel Session 2Right hand side
of Oak Room
17:15 – 18:00Poster session, prizes and receptionChestnut and
Birch Rooms
18:00Close

2020

TimeSession
10:00

Practicalities, Welcome and Introduction
Adrian Jenkins/Alastair Basden
10:10

Introduction to The DIRAC3 Technical Case
Jeremy Yates
10:25

The new Data Intensive Service
Paul Calleja
10:35

The new Extreme Scaling Service
Antonin Portelli
10:45

The new Memory Intensive Service
Alastair Basden
10:55Questions
11:00Break
11:15

The new Research Software Engineer Service
Andy Turner
11:25

The new Data Curation Service
Alastair Basden
11:35

The ExCALIBUR Hardware and Enabling Software Programme
Martin Hamilton
11:45

Multi-factor authentication on DiRAC resources
Jon Wakelin
12:00Break
12:15

Meet the technical team
All teams
12:25

Student Cluster Competition
Mark Wilkinson
12:35

Innovation Placement outputs
Mark Wilkinson
12:45

Suggestions for follow up meetings and projects
Alastair Basden
13:00Lunch
14:00Director’s talk
14:20

A steeply-inclined trajectory for the Chicxulub impact.
Thomas Davison
14:45

B Meson Oscillations
Christine Davies
15:00

The external photo-evaporation of planet-forming discs
Tom Haworth
15:15Break
15:30

DiRAC enables prediction for matter-anti-matter asymmetry in the Standard Model.
Christopher Sachrajda
15:55


Identifying and Quantifying the Role of Magnetic Reconnection in Space Plasma Turbulence.
Jeffersson Andres Agudelo Rueda
16:10

Extreme QCD: Quantifying the QCD Phase Diagram
Aleksandr Nikolaev
16:25Hackathon Presentations
16:50Poster Competition results
16:55Closing Talk
17:00End

DiRAC-3 Launch

Welcome: Jeremy Yates, Chair of DiRAC Technical Directorate

Overview of the new HPC Systems and hardware across all services: Mark Wilkinson, Director

Overview of User Guide: Anushka Sharma, Senior Technical Programme Coordinator

Overview of DiRAC Training: Richard Regan, Training Manager

TauREx on DiRAC-3: Dr. Ahmed Faris Al-Refaie, University College London

A Lattice Field Theory Ecosystem for DiRAC-3: L Del Debbio, University of Edinburgh

Large cosmological runs on the new DiRAC MI “Cosma-8” facility: Matthieu Schaller, Lorentz Institute, on behalf of the Virgo Consortium

The Technical Working Group experience of deploying DiRAC3: Alastair Basden, Technical Manager

The Research Software Engineer Experience: James Richings, Edinburgh and Athena Elafrou, Cambridge

Closing remarks: Simon Hands, DiRAC Community Development Director


Welcome: Jeremy Yates, Chair of DiRAC Technical Directorate

Research Image Competition 2022

Research Image Competition 2022

DiRAC is excited to launch our inaugural research image competition and encourage our past and present users to submit aesthetically inspiring and scientifically interesting imagery which has been generated using the DiRAC facility over the past three years.

The competition is a wonderful opportunity to have your research imagery displayed across the DiRAC platform, on our website, on social media, and in print media (see our 2022 calendar, right) and will help promote interest in your area of scientific study.

There are two categories for submission and the winners of each category will be selected by a panel of experts.

The top image in each category being awarded a £250 Amazon e-voucher, kindly donated by Q Associates, a Logicalis company.

Submissions are now closed.

DiRAC 2022 Calendar comprising previously submitted images generated on DiRAC.

Themes:

Theme 1: Particle and Nuclear Physics

Theme 2: Astronomy, Cosmology and Solar & Planetary Science

Any imagery submitted to this competition could be used in future marketing/publicity materials relating to DiRAC in either digital or print and as such, should have visual impact and scientific interest. We will be producing a 2023 DiRAC image calendar, the imagery for which will be drawn from the submissions to this competition and a selection of the top images will be displayed in print at our annual DiRAC Science Day event.

Entry requirements:
  • Images must be generated as a result of research work carried out using the DiRAC facility
  • Images should not be older than three years
  • Digital images must be submitted in one of the following formats: JPEG, TIFF, PNG or PDF
  • All entries must be accompanied by an entry form (see details below)
  • Entires should be accompanied by a short description, of no more than 150 words, giving scientific context to the image
  • Images may be generated specifically for this competition, but should result from research performed within the last 3 years
  • Author names should be included
  • Up to three submissions may be made per person
  • Images should be of a sufficient size and resolution (300 dpi minimum)
  • File sizes should not be larger than 15mb
  • Competition opens 1st Sept
  • The deadline for submissions is 5pm, Friday 14th October
Judging

  • Dr Clare Jenner (Chair), DiRAC Deputy Director
  • Dr Jonathan Allday, Teacher and Science Writer
    • Author of Quarks, Leptons and the Big Bang and Space-time
  • Prof Peter Coles, Maynooth University
    • Peter is an author and runs the In The Dark science blog
  • Prof Lucie Green, University College London
    • Lucie is a Science broadcaster and former presenter of The Sky at Night
  • Prof Tara Shears, University of Liverpool
    • Tara has worked with the Arts Catalyst visual arts project
  • Georgina Ellis, Q Associates
    • Senior Account Manager

Submissions are now closed

Queries can be directed to Simon Hands, DiRAC Community Director

Quantum Workshop Agenda

Draft Agenda

09.30 – 10.00:   Doors Open- Coffee available from 09.30

10.00 – 11.30:   Introduction to Quantum Computing

  • What makes a computer ‘quantum’?
  • The principles of superposition
  • Understanding qubits and the Bloch sphere
  • Elementary gates and measurement operations
  • Entanglement and multi-qubit operations
  • Quantum processing architectures

11.30 – 11.45:   Coffee Break

11.45 – 12.45:   Practical Session 1:  Introduction to myQLM and ‘Circuits 101’

  • Initialising a register of qubits
  • Types of measurements
  • Creating and executing circuits
  • How to select a quantum processing unit
  • Creating entangled pairs
    • Superdense coding
  • Quantum encoding schemes
    • Quantum search algorithms

12.45 – 13.45:   Break for Lunch & Networking

13.45 – 14.45:   Practical Session 2: Applications of Quantum Computing

  • Variational quantum algorithms and machine learning
    • Designing a hybrid classical-quantum algorithm
    • Variational quantum eigensolver
    • Quantum neural networks
    • Loss functions and gradient descent for a parameterised circuit

14.45 – 15.00:   Coffee Break

15.00 – 15.30:   Atos:  Quantum Horizons and a View to the Future talk

15.30 – 16.00:   Application to Research: Quantum Field Theory talk

16.00 – 16.30:   Application to Research:  Classification of Pulsars talk

16.30:                  Doors Close

Practical Introduction to Quantum Computing

Practical Introduction to Quantum Computing
20th September 2022, 09.30 – 16.30, London
Applications Closed 25th August 2022, 17.00

Workshop: A Practical Introduction to Quantum Computing

Quantum computers offer a new paradigm for tackling important problems in physics and other scientific disciplines. The promise of quantum advantage and large-scale general purpose processors may be years away, but hybrid algorithms using Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers can already provide a computational advantage for solving real-world problems in the fields of quantum chemistry, material science, cryptography, data science, and biology.

Description
Atos Quantum Learning Machine

DiRAC has partnered with Atos, the Global Information Technology Service, to offer our users the opportunity to learn and experiment with Quantum Computers. The Atos Quantum Learning Machine (Atos QLM) framework provides high-power simulators that allow researchers to rapidly iterate on the design of their algorithms and analyse their performance while simulating the noise and constraints of real quantum architectures.and get ready for the Quantum Revolution.

Using the Atos myQLM Python package, this workshop will introduce the fundamentals of quantum computing through talks and hands-on worked examples from particle physics and astrophysics quantum machine learning, and teach you how to design, create, and execute a quantum circuit. Over the course of the day you’ll develop the skills and knowledge needed to engage with this exciting emerging field and begin leveraging the power of quantum algorithms to solve problems in your own field.

A draft agenda can be found here.
Location

The Workshop will be hosted at The Wellcome Institute, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

Places for this workshop are limited and the Application Form can be found below. Successful Applicants will be notified on the 26th August and asked to run a simple myQLM code prior to the workshop.

Please contact Richard Regan, DiRAC’s Training Manager (richard.regan@durham.ac.uk) for more information

Application Closed (Deadline 25th August, 17.00)

DiRAC-3 Launch Day

Programme

Welcome: Jeremy Yates, Chair of DiRAC Technical Directorate

Overview of the new HPC Systems and hardware across all services: Mark Wilkinson, Director

Overview of User Guide: Anushka Sharma, Senior Technical Programme Coordinator

Overview of DiRAC Training: Richard Regan, Training Manager

TauREx on DiRAC-3: Dr. Ahmed Faris Al-Refaie, University College London

A Lattice Field Theory Ecosystem for DiRAC-3: L Del Debbio, University of Edinburgh

Large cosmological runs on the new DiRAC MI “Cosma-8” facility: Matthieu Schaller, Lorentz Institute, on behalf of the Virgo Consortium

The Technical Working Group experience of deploying DiRAC3: Alastair Basden, Technical Manager

The Research Software Engineer Experience: James Richings, Edinburgh and Athena Elafrou, Cambridge

Closing remarks: Simon Hands, DiRAC Community Development Director


Welcome: Jeremy Yates, Chair of DiRAC Technical Directorate


Overview of the new HPC Systems and hardware across all services: Mark Wilkinson, Director

Overview of User Guide: Anushka Sharma, Senior Technical Programme Coordinator

Overview of DiRAC Training: Richard Regan, Training Manager

TauREx on DiRAC-3: Dr. Ahmed Faris Al-Refaie, University College London

A Lattice Field Theory Ecosystem for DiRAC-3: L Del Debbio, University of Edinburgh

Large cosmological runs on the new DiRAC MI “Cosma-8” facility: Matthieu Schaller, Lorentz Institute, on behalf of the Virgo Consortium

The Technical Working Group experience of deploying DiRAC3: Alastair Basden, Technical Manager

The Research Software Engineer Experience: James Richings, Edinburgh and Athena Elafrou, Cambridge

Closing remarks: Simon Hands, DiRAC Community Development Director