Challenges in fluid mechanics and scientific computing in industry (Conference)

This conference will be held at the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, and it covers exactly the topics I think HPC should cover in the Basque Country.

BCAM -the initials of the center- is making until now the right thing: it is nonsense to buy hardware to the americans and say that you make computational science when you still got a group to scientist to hire. It is more about the science in the applications we will develop and how this apply to our or other industries we could sell to.

From my point of view this is a good and more than welcome fresh start: it is very well addressed and no computer scientist should ignore this center: it is a good start to build -in parallel- a basque strategy in computer architecture, systems and data centre research (and business development).

Perhaps late, but sure thing.

Why should it be Lemoniz (the Data Centre) (beta)

0- Because the place needs to be rebuilt, and accommodated as a shared space with the Basque citizines and victims of terrorism: this along with a natural reconversion of the space taken to the sea and the enhancement of Basque human progress is the best end the our society needs. Walled spaces are not something we should be proud of.

And on top of that my technical reasons:

1- Because it is a very safe place (physical): the main buildings (the reactors) are strong large and extremely safe caves that are even prepared for external impacts.
2- Because companies are interested in safe places: to host the datacenter.
3- Because caves could be rebuilt from the inside: warranting an intelligent design and reducing the amount of columns.
4- Because we need to consolidate, protect and run our computing resources to the fullest according with the latest technology and in terms of efficiency and performance.

Therefore:

-This centre and its infrastructure should be created with the agreement with the Government in Madrid, owned by Government in the Basque Country, and in partnership with industry, research and universities in the Basque Country. Lack of any of this factors would mean total failure. On the contrary, social partnership at all levels would be an unprecedented success.

And all this comes from this story.

Personnel: Critical Success Factors

"Management of such machines is sometimes highly specialized. Presently all these people work in different locations in small centres of companies and in groups of no more than two: we need to make these people share information, experience and educate them well."

Eroski Data Centre

The biggest industrial data centre in the Basque (video in Spanish):


It is called Geminis and it is located in the small city of Elorrio.
The video is from a local television technology program (teknopolis).





Read the contents in English here.

Data Center as Critical Success Factor

"Small and Medium Companies, Universities, Government and Research Centres and Companies should create a shared datacenter and working areas."

The datacentre is the kick-off HPC infrastructure. It is as critical as building a road or connecting with high speed trains or airplanes. We should stop creating small, unsafe, dangerous and unproperly PUE-ed small datacentre desings: it is time to consolidate and securize such infrastructures around the basque area. It is time to create a building infrastructure able to provide uptime, power, security at all leves, for all the science, enterprise, industry and educational actors. It is time to consolidate and build something useful and safe. The start of a HPC-Hub could be Lemoniz: better that it may seen as I already said in another post. Nevertheless I want to introduce here another good practice from Europe. Germany what a suprise.

The pictures show one of my favourites datacentres design the LRZ.

Here are the building offices and the impressive cube at the end is the datacentre itself. Each floor in there is a level of service. Elevators at the sides, stairs, from bottom to top each floor is one service: water and cooling, networking, power, backup and machine room at the top room, a space without columns (see the last picture). Impresive well design. The building includes a control room kinda space control room. Others datacentres in Europe also include such infrastructure.

Ideas for the future ...

If created, such centre would need to be funded in previously existing partnership with Industry. That is the key.

CIE Automotive and Simulation

This automotive company already collaborates with research centres and universities across the Basque Country.

CIE Automotive's software and research departments work with CAD, CAE and simulation tools.

It is funny coz some centres have to kill themselves to find this kinda of clients and we, in the basque, are surrounded by them ;-) perhaps because they are basque companies :-p