NAISS information week 12 2023

Dear colleagues,

Here comes an update about the start-up of NAISS, the National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden. Please spread this update to all interested people. For-purpose fit e-mail lists are being prepared for future information e-mails.

NAISS leadership

Following a nomination procedure involving all large Swedish universities, the names for the regular Steering committee of NAISS is set, and scheduled for formal appointment by LiUs vice-chancellor at the decision meeting of 27 of March, it will be made public directly thereafter.

NAISS Steering committee will at their first meeting commence the recruitment process of a regular director. Meanwhile, in support of the acting director Björn Alling, NAISS has decided to appoint Niclas Andersson, LiU, as Technical director, Gert Svensson, KTH, as deputy Technical Director and Anna Jänis, LiU, as economy- and HR-director. Joachim Hein, LU, is appointed as NAISS-training coordinator.

National Allocation Committee (NAC)

NAISS has appointed the NAC committee responsible for the resource allocation process. The group is similar to the SNAC committee of 2022:

Chairman:

Paul Erhart, Chalmers

Other members:

Olav Vahtras, KTH
Susanne Höfner, Uppsala university
Outi Tammisola, KTH
Johan Revstedt, Lund University
Leif Eriksson , Gothenburg University

Secretary of NAC and NAC-wg coordinator:

Peter Münger, LiU

NAISS-budget for 2023

NAISS interim Steering Committee has decided on the budget for NAISS for 2023 with a prognosis for the period 2024-2026. Before this decision, information about changes in running costs, in particular for electricity and cooling, for running the existing NAISS systems taken over from SNIC, has been collected from the various centers that are running them. NAISS will honor the responsibility to support the systems as planned by SNIC and will compensate the centers for these reported increase in cost for 2023. However, the rise in running costs of present systems is a threat against the ambition level of future investments of NAISS. For this reason strict follow-ups on the development of costs will be performed during 2023 and if the situation is not improved, measures will have to be taken from 2024 and onwards.

For the support and training organization, NAISS is budgeting for a branch-organization supported with 3 MSEK each from nine universities. In addition, the allocation organization, NAC-working group, and the SUPR/SAMS team is decentralized and funded by a combination of VR part of the budget and the 1 MSEK base-support payed by each of ten universities.

NAISS organization of branches

NAISS is developing the organizational plan for the NAISS branches that will be responsible for the main load of users support on first and middle level. The NAISS branches will also play the main role for conducting users training and coordinating NAISS work with the advanced users support steered and financed by the universities. The branches will also coordinate NAISS collaboration with research areas infrastructure organizations, like SeRC, NBIS, DDLS etc.

The NAISS users support will be organized around services offered rather than physical location of the staff. This services can be both a particular resource, like a particular computer system, but also a specific scientific area. The NAISS branch members can typically take part in two or more supported services depending on her/his expertise and experience. A service can be supported by different people working in several different branches. Each supported service will have a coordinator responsible for making sure support for it is working. Two support directors will steer the support organization and together with the service coordinators make sure that all services have sufficient staff available.

Each branch will also be part of the line organization of its host university. The line managers will be responsible for e.g. work environment, salary talks, and offices, but NAISS will lead the content of the staffs work through the support organization. NAISS central leadership will work closely with the line managers to ensure a positive and stimulating work environment for all NAISS branch staff.

We are now scheduling planning meetings with the host universities to make concrete decisions about the branches, their staff, and their areas of responsibilities within NAISS. In parallel the formal written agreements are being drafted.

Work with establishing a new national site for hardware

Professor Lennart Johnsson, University of Houston, has been appointed chairman of the investigation group working with evaluating and suggesting a new national site for HPC hardware. The other members in the investigation group are Niclas Andersson, LiU, Gert Svensson, KTH Björn Torkelsson, UmU, Mattias Wadenstein, UmU, Thomas Svedberg, Chalmers, Anders Follin, LU, Andreas Håkansson, UU, Andreas Johansson, LiU. The group will continue to work on a very aggressive timeline yet allowing for a careful and exhaustive analysis of the available options and corresponding recommendations to NAISS Steering committee for a decision.

Linköping 20 Mars 2023