Trip to CSCS in Lugano

Team RACKlette has recently invited ten new members to the team after a series of interiews. As per usual, the new members were introduced to all the tools the team uses, most importantly the git repos, wikis and slack channels. But the most important thing was the annual trip to CSCS in Lugano to get connected to the Cluster and learn about CSCS and Supercomputing in general.

On the 28. April 2022 the ten new members and four senior members went to Lugano to meet our contact Hussein at CSCS. In the train the team got to know each other better through games and conversation. Apart from that, some of us caught up on some sleep while others were busy solving and working on exercises for ETH.

Once we arrived at the CSCS, the new members got their first look at the incredibly modern building and finally met Hussein in person. The whole team, but especially the participating members, discussed the upcoming ISC Competition in Hamburg. Amongst the things we discussed were when the Cluster is going to be shipped and when it will go offline. Then Hussein informed the new members about the history of CSCS, introduced them to High Performance Computing and gave us all some tips on what what will be important fields and applications in the future. He also talked about current developments at CSCS with the Cloud as a fast growing competitor, and how CSCS and Supercomputing in Switzerland will stay competitive in the coming years.

After this introduction, we went to view the Server Room. There we got to see numerous clusters but also lots of empty space waiting to be filled with more computational power in the future. A new Supercomputer named Alps is currently being installed at CSCS.

This new cluster is of such high power that every major component (including power delivery) is water cooled. Hussein toured us around more Supercomputers, while he talked about what the advantages of each system are and what they are built for. Some were general purpose nodes for academia, some were custom built for specific research projects and finally there was of course our RACKlette cluster.

Besides learning about the purpose and history of the supercomputers, we got to walk inside of some of them and experience their heat output first hand. After our tour we took our team picture and went back to our meeting room to talk a bit more about the different Supercomputers we had just visited.

After the tour and following discussion it was time for lunch. As one does when visiting Lugano, we went to an Italian restaurant where we were invited to a delicious meal.

After this break, a senior team member gave us an introduction on how to connect to the cluster, how to work with it and some handy tips and tricks. Meanwhile other senior team members continued to prepare for the ISC22 Student Cluster Competition. For this purpose we got help from Andreas Joksch . In addition to finalizing our application to the SC22 Student Cluster Competition, we also finished some organizational tasks around the team, such as getting everyones picture taken for our website . After the introduction to our server, the new members could further familiarize themselves with the team and read up on the applications we are challenging for ISC22.

In the little time we still had to spare, we went to the historic part of Lugano to get some ice cream before the train ride home. Unfortunately the SBB forgot about the reservations (the car number where our reservation was supposed to be didn't exist) so the conductor gave us a free upgrade to first class.

The return journey was productive too. Travel plans to ISC22 in Hamburg were finalized and wiki entries created. The growing team spirit was clear to see. And thus ends this fantastic trip to CSCS. Thanks to Hussein for showing us around and CSCS for the lunch.