The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility welcomed users to an interactive meeting at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory from Sept. 10-11 for an opportunity to share achievements from the OLCF's user programs and highlight requirements for the future.
The 20th annual event was the largest yet with 170 registered attendees. The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences auditorium was at maximum capacity with 78 users attending in person, while the rest participated virtually.
This year's meeting was planned by Josh Cunningham, IT project manager, and MacKenzie Bellimam, project specialist, along with 18 other National Center for Computational Sciences, or NCCS, staff as part of the OLCF user meeting planning committee. Attendees spent two days learning about updates to OLCF's user programs and interacting in person with other users, OLCF personnel and vendors.
"It's always a real pleasure for us to get this one-on-one time live with the users," Cunningham said. "So many side conversations and problem-solving and troubleshooting conversations happen here. It's incredibly valuable to hold this year after year and have these personal connections with the user base."
Users received facility updates on Orion, the input/output subsystem from Hewlett Packard Enterprise that was brought online in 2022 to support the Frontier supercomputer and the OLCF. They also received an update on Kronos, the new nearline storage facility that has recently replaced the facility's High Performance Storage System.
During the second day, attendees learned about the Quantum Computing User Program, which awards time on privately owned quantum processors around the country to support research projects. Users also received an update on the ongoing work led by ORNL's Tom Beck, section head for scientific engagement, on the roadmap for integration of high-performance computing and quantum computing.
"It was great to see a lot of participation, both in the meeting and in the planning for the meeting," said ORNL's Verónica Melesse Vergara, head of the HPC Operations Section for the NCCS. "We had great involvement from users themselves. The OLCF User Group Executive Board reviewed and selected the user-contributed talks to be presented at the meeting, and the program was built in collaboration with the users, which resulted in a very successful meeting."
NCCS Director Arjun Shankar gave an update on the facility's next high-performance computing system. The upcoming system, to be called Discovery, will be designed to offer new computational capabilities over Frontier, and is planned to be launched in 2028.
The meeting featured a showcase in the EVEREST visualization laboratory, where attendees could analyze simulation data generated on OLCF supercomputers and get an in-depth demonstration. They were also given a chance to try out the lab's virtual reality capabilities to further immerse themselves in a simulated environment.
For the first time this year, the OLCF hosted hands-on training that included a session on profilers focused on HPCToolkit presented by Jonathan Anderson of Rice University and another on using containers on Frontier led by Subil Abraham of OLCF. The meeting also provided an overview of OLCF support available for users including office hours and training opportunities.
The poster session this year coincided with the visualization showcase and generated substantial interest, with 34 posters presented.
"The poster session was really awesome," Melesse Vergara said. "It shows the range of impact that we have. I think overall the meeting highlighted areas that users care about, both current and future."
The Frontier Hackathon was co-located with this year's event, which consisted of three virtual days, and the fourth day in-person on Monday before the OLCF User Meeting. On the final day of the meeting, there was an out-briefing from teams on their hackathon accomplishments to give an update on their progress.
During the second day of the event, OLCF User Group elections were held and four new members were announced for the OLCF User Group board: Mia Li of the University of Oklahoma, Min Xu of ORNL, Steve de Bruyn Kops of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Sara Isbell of ORNL. The board's 10 users represent the OLCF user community and provide feedback to OLCF staff.
The final session of the two-day meeting included a sendoff celebration for the Summit supercomputer, which highlighted the extraordinary impact it has had since it was launched in 2018. The celebration included a display of Summit-themed cupcakes and users commemorated the event by signing a piece of a Summit cabinet door.
Summit was the predecessor to the Frontier supercomputer and has allowed researchers in all fields of science unprecedented access to solving some of the world's most pressing challenges. After almost six years of production service providing over 200 million node hours to researchers around the world, Summit will officially be decommissioned on Nov. 15.
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility at ORNL, helps researchers solve some of the world's most challenging scientific problems with a combination of world-class high-performance computing, or HPC, resources and world-class expertise in scientific computing. To learn more visit olcf.ornl.gov.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. - Angela Gosnell
