July 2024 - Physics-Departmental-Computing

Draft email to distribute regarding HX2 and future needs
by David Colling 30 Oct '24

30 Oct '24

Hi All, I promised both the Physics Computing Committee and the FRCC that I would send around and email for people to circulate to aquire information about HX2 and other future needs. I started and then thought that it might be more fruitful to circulate a draft first and then refine it slightly. So below is a (fairly rough) draft for comment. Comments are very welcome. Best, david Sub: Input into future research computing needs Dear All, As you may know the College's HPC platform has been upgraded with HX1 coming online earlier this year. HX1 is a cluster of over 18k cores (Intel Xeon Platinum 8358) and 60 GPUs (Nvidia A100s). This year the focus is on the update of the data storage with a move away from the current RDS to a more structured Research Data Facility (RDF). The RDF will be coming online later this year. We are now looking for input as to what will be needed both next year and further into the future on a 3 to 5 year time scale. Next year the plan is to decommission the College's main High Throughput Cluster (HTC) CX3 and replace with a new system. The budget available for this purchase will be approximately £5M. Because this will be our first fully watercolled system, we are negotiating space in a new data centre with this capability and so this resource will not come online until the summer of 2025. We are seeking your input as to what we should purchase. As this is replacing an HTC system it is assumed that the majority of the money will be spent on another HTC system, however, if your research has need for other shapes of resources then please let us know. Also even if what you want is an HTC resources what parameters are important to you (e.g. memory/core, access to GPUs, throughput from disk, etc etc). *** Different for different departments - this is the physics example *** Please give us feedback via your representatives on the Departmental Computing Committee. We are also trying to establish what the more medium term computing needs will be. So please can you also discuss these with your representatives on the Departmental Computing Committee. These may be expected needs from from specific instruments/experiments/projects of general growth in computing needs. We will then try to amalgamate these into a coherent input for future purchses. Best, david

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Apologies for the short notice - please fill in doodle
by David Colling 10 Jul '24

10 Jul '24

Dear All, My apologies, I have been in a Summer School all week and so thishas rather snuck up on me. When I looked at what I had next week just now I saw that we have a FoNS Computing Meeting next Wednesday afternoon. As you know I like to have our physics meeting the week before the FoNS meeting. I have clearly left this rather late. The easiest way I can see to do this would be for us to meet on the Wednesday lunchtime before the FoNS meeting in the afternoon. I would struggle with either Monday or Tuesday because of previous commitments. The alternative is to have physics after the FoNS meeting.I have put in Thurday and Friday (having moved Friday to be after the examiners meeting). So, my preferred day is Wednesday but if that is not possible then after the FoNS meeting. Please could you fill in the doodle poll by the end of play on Monday. The poll is at: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/b8BQAQ2e Best, david

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Physics Departmental Computing Meeting
by Physics Executive Assistant 10 Jul '24

10 Jul '24

Purely virtual meeting. Agenda: - Update from RCS - Andy - General update from ITC -Okan - Possible discussion of RCS support in Physics but I have yet to complete the 2-page briefing paper on this (will do this week) - AoB ________________________________________________________________________________ Microsoft Teams Need help?<https://aka.ms/JoinTeamsMeeting?omkt=en-US> Join the meeting now<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_Y2RmNmI3YzgtYzNmOC00…> Meeting ID: 365 448 794 282 Passcode: V4UG4T ________________________________ For organizers: Meeting options<https://teams.microsoft.com/meetingOptions/?organizerId=737bc38c-a4e7-4298-…> [https://www.imperial.ac.uk/ict/assets/IMPERIAL_Wordmark_RGB_Blue_safe_area_…] Privacy and security<https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/administration-and-suppor…> ________________________________________________________________________________

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