Advanced education and research needs require tailor-made solutions.
Created in 2018 by the digital skills initiative INCoDe.2030, the RNCA It is intended to provide advanced computing services (high performance) to the research, technology, innovation and industry communities.
In an interview with the area director, João Pagaime, we sought to clarify all doubts about the National Advanced Computing Network and its future.
And if you don't know our national supercomputers yet, read the news which details each of them.
8 questions about RNCA
#1 RNCA provides advanced computing services to the research, technology, innovation, and industrial communities. Can you give us some examples of specific cases in which this service might be useful?
Advanced computing, and specifically high-performance computing, allows us to solve calculation problems that are impossible to solve with conventional computational means, such as the simulation of natural phenomena, such as weather forecasting, climate change, earthquake impacts, etc.; supporting research in fundamental science: physics, chemistry, and other disciplines; contributing to scientific advances: medicine and other areas, such as the discovery of new drugs; supporting engineering projects, such as wind turbine installation, car design/CFD, and all projects involving the processing of large volumes of data.
#2 What types of entities might be interested in these services? And how can they access RNCA's computing resources?
Organizations involved in research or product innovation processes are typically interested in these services. To access the RNCA's computing resources, access competitions are open and advertised on the FCT portal. Interested entities must submit an advanced computing project to one of these competitions. Additionally, some RNCA operational centers have their own computing capacity that they can make available through their own access processes. More information can be found on each center's portal.
#3 At a time when the National Advanced Computing Network celebrates its third year of existence, what can you tell us about the evolution of this infrastructure managed by the FCCN Unit?
The RNCA is managed by the FCCN unit of the FCT, bringing together a set of resources from operational centers and competence centers, whose internal regulations and minimum requirements were published in the official gazette, as well as the regulation for advanced computing projects: Regulations No. 1049/2020, No. 470/2021 and No. 772-A/2020.
The RNCA will soon have a state-of-the-art supercomputer acquired by the European organization EuroHPC, which will be installed in Portugal at the Guimarães Science and Technology Park, at the MACC – Minho Advanced Computing Center. Most of this supercomputer's capacity will be made available to the national research, technology, innovation, and industrial communities, with the remainder being used by the European organization EuroHPC.
#4 According to the RNCA utilization report, published in 2020, the total number of hours of utilization (core_CPU x hour) is over 43 million. How do you assess this number? Is there data on the types of projects and entities that contributed to this number?
We consider this number of computing hours executed to be very positive, knowing that it was the first time in Portugal that a competition of this type was organized.
The distribution by typologies of the 129 supported projects was as follows: 67 projects A2 (Project Access) and A1 (Preparatory Access), 62 projects A0 and A00 (trial vouchers).
Among the 133 applications received, we counted 31 entities involved in a universe that includes Higher Education, Companies, Associated and Collaborative Laboratories, including numerous research units.
Of the more than 80 million cores and hours requested, around 35 million were allocated in this competition alone, distributed across the platforms of the 4 operational centers.
With some projects still ongoing, and looking at some of the final reports already received, we note 6 articles already published, several submitted, and over 30 master's or doctoral theses in preparation. Both the high demand for these resources and the overall user satisfaction, rated 8.2 on a scale of 0 to 10, gave the team and our Board of Directors the motivation and strength to move forward with a second edition of this competition, launched on July 19th. This second edition continues to accept applications for some access types until April 2022. Learn more visit the website and see the list of approved projects with the respective details.
#5 What are the main objectives of the RNCA in the near future?
Some very important objectives for the RNCA arise from the strategy ADVANCED COMPUTING PORTUGAL 2030 are available for consultation at website.
In the near future, the RNCA aims to main objectives:
- significant increase in calculation capacity and speed through the new Deucalion supercomputer acquired by the European organization EuroHPC, which will be installed in Portugal and operated by MACC, an operational center of the RNCA.
- increasing digital skills in the use of advanced computing, in particular by increasing the supply of specific training, based on funded projects such as EuroCC, ERASMUS+ and others.
- development of international partnerships, namely with BSC (Barcelona) within the scope of the memorandum of understanding between Portugal and Spain on advanced computing matters.
- continuation of the RNCA's administrative and budgetary consolidation efforts.
#6 Looking at the current context, how relevant are supercomputing tools? And how do you foresee this scenario evolving in the future?
Supercomputing tools are essential to support the production of world-class science, both in scientific discovery processes and in science-based technological innovation processes.
A significant increase in the need for advanced computing is expected, especially for processing large volumes of data in high-performance computing environments, where the industrial sector is expected to increasingly seek these resources.
Technologies such as IoT – Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and the Deep Learning are currently available to industry but require computational resources in addition to conventional ones, so it is very important to develop these resources, removing barriers to the country's economic development.
#7 In this sense, what initiatives have been taken to publicize the innovation potential of these resources?
Among the applications for project competitions, we continue to receive an increasing number of proposals that require specific Artificial Intelligence tools and other disruptive technologies, sometimes combined with HPC or scientific cloud models.
Throughout this year we have seen an increase in GPU capacity in the various RNCA centers and, with the installation of Deucalion at MACC and Vision at HPC-UÉ, a greater response will be given to the growing demands for use in these areas. Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing and others.
Alongside these new platforms, it was recently announced that Google will provide the FCT with a set of cloud resources worth €1.7 million. To distribute these resources and in line with the National AI Strategy, we are already preparing to launch an AI Project Competition, to be launched in 2021/22.
In addition to expanding the range of resources available in operational centers and competency centers, it's important to increasingly attract the innovation community to the world of advanced computing. We've seen a few, but increasingly, cases of companies and industries experimenting with and utilizing these resources—for example, example Tooling4G.
We are already working with the INCoDe.2030 team, RNCA and EuroCC partners, among others, to develop initiatives and training opportunities that boost companies' access to and use of advanced computing resources.
#8 Is there anything you would like to add?
In addition to the RNCA, which corresponds to a national effort, the European community has a global offer through the competitions of PRACE and, more recently, of EuroHPC.
If you are interested in learning more, please contact us at rnca@fccn.pt and visit the FCCN website.
The 1st RNCA 2021 Meeting recently took place online from September 28th to 30th, and in October we will have the national event that brings together the academic and scientific community, Journeys, and where you will find the managers and service director who will be able to answer all your questions.
