July 13 — Experts from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) and their collaborators will present a number of topics at XSEDE16, the fifth annual conference of the NSF-funded Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). XSEDE16 will take place at the Intercontinental Miami Hotel on July 17 through 21.

The theme for XSEDE 16 is “DIVERSITY, BIG DATA & SCIENCE AT SCALE: Enabling the Next Generation of Science and Technology.” PSC staff and their collaborators will discuss new Big Data resources such as PSC’s NSF-funded Bridges system, other new hardware and software tools, and educational and user-service efforts developed by PSC and its collaborating institutions:

Monday, July 18

• 8 a.m. Using the Novel Features of Bridges and Optimizing for its Intel Processors – A hands-on tutorial on how to best leverage the unique features and capabilities of PSC’s new XSEDE converged HPC and Big Data resource, Bridges. Anirban Jana, PSC; Zhang Zhang, Intel
• 1 p.m. XSEDE New User Tutorial: Allocations – This tutorial will provide training and hands-on activities to help new users learn and become comfortable with the basic steps necessary to first obtain, and then successfully employ an XSEDE allocation to accomplish their research or educational goals. Kevin Chen, TACC; Ken Hackworth, PSC; James Marsteller, PSC
• 5:15 p.m. Coin of the Realm: Current Practices and Future Opportunities in Processing of XSEDE Allocations Awards and Usage Data – This “Birds of a Feather” (BoF) session seeks to share lessons learned, best practices, and new ideas for how current and future XSEDE service providers (SPs) address processing XSEDE allocation awards and subsequent reporting of usage by XSEDE SPs. Steve Gallo, U. Buffalo; Ken Hackworth, PSC; Ed Hanna, PSC; Victor Hazlewood, NICS; Amy Schuele, NCSA; Carol Song, Purdue; Shawn Strande, SDSC; Rick Wagner, SDSC

Tuesday, July 19

• 10:30 a.m. A Virtual Filesystem for On-demand Processing of Multi-dimensional Datasets – A presentation of the Virtual Volume File System, a new approach to on-demand processing with file system semantics, combining these principles into a versatile and powerful data pipeline for dealing with some of the largest 3D volumetric datasets. Jennifer Bakal, PSC; Markus Dittrich, formerly PSC, now at Bioteam; Arthur Wetzel, PSC
• 11 a.m. Assisting Bioinformatics Programs at Minority Institutions: Needs Assessment and Lessons Learned—A Look at an Internship Program – An analysis of the highly successful outreach effort and cost-effective use of the MARC funding program from the National Institutes of Health, including important policy lessons to ensure that educators, students and researchers at minority serving institutions can address science problems using state-of-the-art bioinformatics. Pallavi Ishwad, PSC; Ricardo Gonzalez Mendez, U. Puerto Rico Rio Piedras; Hugh B. Nicholas, Jr, PSC; Alexander Ropelewski, PSC; Jimmy Torres, U. Puerto Rico Rio Piedras
• 5:15 p.m. XSEDE Resource Allocation Service (XRAS) – A BoF discussion of XSEDE’s Resource Allocation Service (XRAS) software, which successfully manages allocation requests for XSEDE resources, instruments and collaborations, and which is now offered to interested clients outside of XSEDE as a way to manage their allocation needs. Maytal Dahan, TACC; Ken Hackworth, PSC; Matthew Hanlon, TACC; David Hart, NCAR; Rob Light, PSC;Steven Peckins, NCSA; Amy Schuele, NCSA; Ester Soriano, SDSC
• 5:15 p.m. Persistent Community of Cyberinfrastructure Professionals: Challenges and Next Steps – The goal of this BoF is to identify challenges, seek potential solutions and help establish collaborative efforts to persistently support fostering of communities comprising cyberinfrastructure professionals. Jim Bottum, Clemson U.; Melissa Cragin, NCSA, ; Dave Lifka, Cornell U.; John Towns, NCSA; Moderator: Phil Blood, PSC

Wednesday, July 20

• 9 a.m. Developing Applications with Networking Capabilities via End-to-End SDN (DANCES) – A description of the DANCES project to investigate and develop a capability to add network bandwidth scheduling capability via software-defined networking (SDN) programmability to selected cyberinfrastructure services and applications and the successful results of tests of the resulting software. Kathy Benninger, PSC; Victor Hazlewood, NICS; Gregory Peterson, NICS
• 10:30 a.m. Not just HPC: XSEDE’s Computing Resource Diversity – This panel session will highlight innovative computational resources available through the XSEDE allocations process. Panelists will discuss user scenarios that their resource is designed to satisfy and will engage in a freeform discussion with attendees. Ralph Roskies, PSC;Mats Rynge, USC; Jeremy Fischer, Indiana U.; Stephane Thiell, Stanford U.; Niall Gaffney, TACC; Jim Lupo, LSU; Moderator: Sergiu Sanielevici, PSC

Thursday, July 21

• 10:30 a.m. Computational Considerations in Transcriptome Assemblies and Their Evaluation, using High Quality Human RNA-Seq Data – A comprehensive transcriptome assembly and validation study using a multi-step pipeline of preprocessing and quality control measures leveraging the large-memory Blacklight, Greenfield and Bridges systems at PSC. Philip D. Blood, PSC; Noushin Ghaffari, Texas A&M; Charles D. Johnson Texas A&M; Raminder Singh, Indiana U.

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Source: PSC