Lomonosov Moscow State University

Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (CMC MSU)

Informatics Europe:

Supercomputer state of
education in Europe

V. Voevodin,
A. Rasgulin, V. Tikhomirov
INARM Webinar Moscow - 29.05.2013

(http://informatics-europe.org)

The Bureau UMC in applied mathematics and computer science on basic science and information technologies

Informatics Europe: Supercomputer state of education in Europe

28 , 2013,

Informatics Europe
(http://informatics-europe.org)

Informatics Europe
(http://informatics-europe.org)

Parallel Computing (Supercomputing) Education in Europe: State-of-Art

(Mission of the Working Group)

Show the need for changes in a higher educational system in the area of computational sciences (IT). Describe the current landscape of Parallel Computing (Supercomputing) Education in Europe. Prepare a set of recommendations how to bring ideas of Parallel Computing into higher educational systems of European countries.

Parallel Computing (Supercomputing) Education in Europe: State-of-Art

(International Working Group)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Vladimir Voevodin; Prof., Dr.Sci., Moscow State University, coordinator of WG, Victor Gergel; Prof., Dr.Sci., Nizhny Novgorod State University, coordinator of WG, Bertrand Meyer; Prof., ETH Zurich, Ali Yazici; Prof., Dr.; Software Engineering Department, Atilim University, Incek-Ankara/Turkey, Andrey Komissarov; NVIDIA GPU Supercomputing marketing manager Europe, Middle East, Russia, India, Paul Guermonprez; Academic Program Manager - Europe, Russia, Middle East, Africa; Intel Software, Lenuta Alboaie; Lecturer, PhD.; Faculty of Computer Science, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania, Hubert Garavel; Directeur de Recherche; INRIA, Peter Thiemann; Professor fur Informatik, Dr.; Institut fur Informatik, Universitat Freiburg, Ayse Kiper; Prof., Dr.; Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University, AnkaraTurkey, Joseph Kiniry; Dr.; IT University of Copenhagen, Femke van Raamsdonk; Dr.; Section Theoretical Computer Science, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Radhakrishnan Delhibabu; Erasmus Mundus Fellow; RWTH Aachen, Germany, Sven-Bodo Scholz; Prof.; Heriot-Watt University, UK, Erik Hagersten; Professor in Computer Architecture, Uppsala University, Sweden, Felix Wolf; Professor, German Research School for Simulation Sciences & RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Torsten Hoefler, htor@inf.ethz.ch; Adjunct Assistant Professor, ETH Zurich, Josep Ramon Herrero; Vice-Dean, Head of Academic Studies at FIB (Barcelona School of Informatics). Jaco van de Pol; Prof.Dr., Chair Formal Methods and Tools, Universiteit Twente, the Netherlands

On-line survey
(brief content)

1. General Questions (5) 2. Country-specific Situation (7) 3. University-specific Situation (14) 4. Detailed Information on PC&S Education in the University (10) Total in the survey: 36 questions

On-line survey
(brief statistics)

Completed responses 64, from 22 countries: Austria Denmark Estonia France 3 Germany 5 Greece India 3 Iran Italy Latvia Norway Pakistan Portugal Romania Russia 12 Serbia Spain 15 Sweden Switzerland Turkey 8 Ukraine United Kingdom 3

1.2. Is PC&S a strategically important area?

(summary of the responses)

1.2. Is PC&S a strategically important area?

(summary of the responses)

Yes, PC&S is a strategically important area: Parallelism is everywhere, parallelism has become for masses, THEREFORE: software/algorithms must become parallel/distributed, scalable, parallel computing must be one of the fundamentals in Computer Science, parallel computing must be taught almost to all science and engineering students. BUT the practice is different due to a lot of serious reasons

1.3. What are the main problems in this area?

(summary of the responses)

BUT the practice is different due to a lot of serious reasons: there is a "big gap" between progress of hardware and software/algorithms SINCE hardware evolves so fast and software needs to catch up with hardware evolution, there are not established standards SINCE the area itself is very dynamic, it evolves so fast, it is inherent interdisciplinary, it covers so diverse topics,

1.3. What are the main problems in this area?

(summary of the responses)

BUT the practice is different due to a lot of serious reasons: there is a lack of traditions on implementation issues among professors and, therefore, students, and there are not many specialists in parallel computing as well as there is a lack of skills in masses, and not all the scientists, developers, and engineers recognize the advantages of PC&S SINCE the area is pretty young,

1.3. What are the main problems in this area?

(summary of the responses)

BUT the practice is different due to a lot of serious reasons: all existing components and technologies in the current software stack (OS, fault tolerance techniques, languages, compilation techniques, tools,) should be revised completely in a few years SINCE degree of parallelism in computing hardware affecting all of them is growing very fast, it is becoming more and more difficult to ensure efficiency, productivity, and portability of software SINCE complexity of parallel computing platforms is growing.

1.3. What are the main problems in this area?

(summary of the responses)

WHY is the practice different? PC&S is not included in compulsory courses in most of universities, making it difficult to increase: number of specialists, understanding of the area, interest to the area.

1.4. What should be done in a short time to solve these problems?

(summary of the responses) Almost all 64 responses include education (in different forms)

1.4. What should be done in a short time to solve these problems?

(summary of the responses) Almost all 64 responses include education (in different forms):

parallel computing should be included in compulsory courses in all the Computer Science and Engineering degrees, to focus on basic training topics enough extended and accepted as standard to establish a few curricula, introduce parallel programming concepts early in education, include parallel computer architectures and parallel computing techniques in the core syllabus in computing degrees, introduction in the curriculum of courses like computer science, electronics and informatics concrete and well defined topics about parallel computing, texts on Parallel Computing/Programming, the courses on parallel programming should become standard, easy access to parallel computing platforms during education,

1.4. What should be done in a short time to solve these problems?

(summary of the responses) NON Educational issues:

rethink the current hardware and software approaches (co-design ideas?) strengthen language-processing technology. Educate people in domain-specific programming rather than coding close to the architecture extensive research on appropriate parallel computing paradigms good financing of software development for supercomputers improve funding situation for seeding research projects into hardware/software design of innovative parallel systems.

1.5. Can the development of PC&S topical contents be useful?

(i.e. structure of the area, Body of Knowledge, )

(3 of 6 No I do not understand the question)

2.5. What is your appreciation of the number of well-trained PC&S specialists in your country?
(summary of the responses)

2.7. Do you see any country-specific aspects of PC&S issues?

(summary of the responses)

Main national conferences: EUROPAR, Grid 5000, workshop REMPAR... Economy. Issues of funding. Lack of PC&S resources available. There is high demand from the Scientific Computing community for education in Parallel Computing, but no big industries drive the need with their real applications. This is due to lack of such industries in such a small country like Estonia. PC&S are extremely important for Norway's oil industry. Also play an important role in operational weather forecasting (we have a very long coast line to track!) and medical imaging.

3.2. Availability of supercomputing resources for the university faculty staff

(summary of the responses)

3.6. Are there advanced training university programs in PC&S?

(summary of the responses)

3.13. Is it necessary to establish more collaboration in PC&S education?

(summary of the responses)

Quote from the survey: Problems in the PC&S area are unlikely to be solved in a short time. Key ingredients of their solution will be broad interdisciplinary and international cooperation. (c)

Informatics Europe:

28 , 2013,