High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales and the Next Generation Workforce: Strategies to Ensure Propagation
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High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales and the Next Generation Workforce: Strategies to Ensure Propagation Laura M. Redfern High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales, Ty Menai, Ffordd Penlan, Parc Menai Business Park, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 4HJ, United Kingdom; Research and Enterprise Office, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG, United Kingdom. ABSTRACT High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales was launched in 2010 as a five year joint venture between Wales’ six Universities, working in partnership with a variety of academic and industrial stakeholders and funded by the EU, UK and Welsh Governments. The aim of HPC Wales is to deliver a pan-Wales HPC infrastructure: primarily to assist with economic regeneration in the Principality of Wales (which has a population of approximately 3.6 million) through the up-skilling of individuals and by promoting uptake of HPC in Welsh businesses, but also open to collaborations from outside Wales. It is the first national service of its kind in Europe. In order to encourage the uptake of HPC into small and medium sized enterprises (of up to 250 staff) in Wales, and for HPC Wales itself to become a sustainable business, the development of a strong skills base is vital. Successful delivery will be marked by the successful upskilling of individuals via accredited training programmes, and through outreach and engagement activities. Recognising that a significant amount of upskilling is required, further work is being undertaken by HPC Wales to develop workflows which can help to simplify the HPC job submission process for the end user. This will make it possible for businesses to achieve results without their needing to acquire a high level of specialist HPC skills in the short term. At a mid-point in this ambitious venture, this paper examines the strategies being developed by HPC Wales which will help to ensure propagation throughout the educational chain so that the requisite skills and workflows are in place which will benefit the next-generation workforce. Through this, HPC Wales hopes to assist in the overall advancement of scientific discovery which will, in turn, help Welsh businesses to become more competitive in the global marketplace. INTRODUCTION Supercomputers are used prolifically in such activities as ocean modelling and simulation, weather forecasting, the rendering of digital games and animations, nuclear energy research, biomedical research and petroleum exploration. As a highly specialist branch of computer science, High-performance Computing (HPC) not only concentrates on developing supercomputers, employed for specialised applications requiring huge amounts of mathematical calculations, but also on the software to run on them. The term can be used to describe the use of parallel processing for running advanced application programs efficiently, reliably and quickly.
The specialist nature of HPC systems, coupled with the significant cost of hardware, infrastructure, staffing and running costs has meant that access to such systems has been possible only for those
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