Dear Physics Computing Committee, I think as physicists we have a lot of case studies where our unusual needs have been met by bespoke local ICT support. I think maybe providing a dossier of evidence of this might be a useful and concrete thing we can do. My comments from the EXSS perspective: * Research Computer Services disappear as a separate entity, and seemed to be lumped in without any management in the 'portfolio function'. The provision of high performance computing at Imperial has been a real success story over the last 15 years. We have an enormous number of people in EXSS doing computational materials research, even within groups that are mainly experimental, and which would not individually be able to support this work with either hardware or expertise. This has led to some extremely high quality science, and has only been possible due to the support for training by RCS / ICT. * The multiple negative references in the white paper to the cost of supporting obsolete hardware / software from 'shadow ICT'. A lot of the EXSS experimental rigs run custom hardware & drivers often associated with obsolete versions of Windows, so this may cause issues. We might find that suddenly no help is offered for any technical issues with these old machines, and are no longer allowed to connect them to the intranet. * Something similar might be the case for the CNC machines in the workshop. * Generally we have very varied and heterogenous requirements in EXSS, and have definitely benefited from bespoke solutions and local expertise. The CMTH/EXSS 'cluster' group operations manager (Carolyn Dale) is concerned that: I am in complete shock about this and at the start of the lockdown at our first admin teams meeting from home we were asked by Luke if we had to time to complete an ICT survey about the service we receive which after what they have done now seems pointless but from my own admin team view and I made them aware of the redundancies on Friday as I had spoken to Martin Morris we are very concerned about the level of service we would receive as we often have to ask for one to one help to assist new students/visitors and problems with our own computers and group laptops so that message comes from the 3 of use in the cluster office Prof Nelson added after I distributed the above to the EXSS PIs: * EXSS has a relatively large number of students and RAs dong computational research alongside experimental work. Since as an experimental group EXSS does not have and could not support its own computational support staff, the existence of the HPC and the RCS service have been absolutely critical in allowing us to work. * EXSS staff and students have developed software that they have published open source or otherwise want to make available for wider use. The services provided by ICT have been essential in allowing that to happen. At least one such piece of software is currently forming part of a physics department REF case study. * the old MRes in plastic electronics and the new MRes that we are opening this October have a significant computational teaching part where we use networked computers and software to teach concepts in the physics and chemistry of materials. We are stepping up the computational teaching part this year due to the pandemic. The support of ICT has been critical in allowing the computational teaching to be done (I can give specific examples of help given by CT staff at the last minute), since this was not a part of standard UG or PG teaching programmes. The computational teaching is considered a relatively innovative part of our MRes programme. * I have an ERC grant largely for computational work. The support of the HPC and RCS was essential to demonstrate that the work could be done within EXSS. Others (like you?) are likely to have similar examples On Sat, 6 Jun 2020 at 14:20, David Colling <d.colling@imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi All,
I would encourage you to circulate this white paper to all the more computer dependent members of your group. Things that particularly worry me are the loss of the whole RSC team (including HPC and RSE teams), the reduced services to users (including AV services) and the constraints on what ICT will be able to support.
I would be very interested in the thoughts and opinions of other people.
Best, david
On 5 June 2020 20:07:52 BST, David Colling <d.colling@imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
Dear Members of the Physics Computing Committee,
You will all no doubt be aware of the reorganisation being planned in ICT. From correspondence with some of you today, it is clear that some of you have read the white paper and others have not. I am not sure how
secret this document is meant to be but I have been sent so many copies
that I view it as essentially being public and so I have attached it to
this email. I would urge you all to read it carefully and especially the staff planning at the end of the document.
best, david
-- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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