NAISS information week 5 2023

Dear colleagues,

The National academic infrastructure for supercomputing in Sweden, NAISS, is operational as of 1 January. My name is Björn Alling and I have been asked by Linköping university to be acting director of NAISS until the regular director has been recruited. With this news-letter I would like to give all of you that work within HPC and related fields in Sweden an update of the status on the start-up of NAISS. Please share this news-letter with all interested people.

NAISS governing structure

The process of appointing NAISS steering group is close to finalization. The Swedish universities has been given the chance to nominate candidates. Jan-Eric Sundgren has been chosen to be chair of the steering group and a short-list for the additional 6 people in the group is now being considered by the rektor of Linköping university.

Meanwhile, an interim steering group is in place consisting of Jan-Eric Sundgren, Matts Karlsson, Charlotte Platzer Björkman, Lars Börjesson, Anders Ynnerman, and Patrick Norman.

NAISS information channels

The homepage naiss.se is under construction and information is starting to be posted there. The old SNIC web resources will be kept online for reference until the NAISS pages are fully functional. E-mail lists etc is being planned. Bi-weekly updates via e-mail is planned during the start-up phase. I am planning for digital information and discussion-meetings with all interested people in the second half of February.

NAISS organization and branches

During February, NAISS chair Jan-Eric Sundgren will hold consultations with the leaderships of all ten universities that were part of SNIC. These talks are expected to give clarity about which universities that will enter as partners to NAISS and on which level, i.e., to host NAISS branches. The attached document, NAISS_filial_info.pdf, is a basis for these discussions and has been formulated by the interim steering group after consultations with universities. The future organization of the advanced users support and application expertise, funded by the universities, couple to the issue of NAISS branches and these discussions are ongoing.

Hand-over from SNIC to NAISS

During the fall, discussions with SNIC-office and all old SNIC-centers were conducted. As a result a common view on which SNIC-agreements that would be taken over by NAISS was reached and communicated. Formal agreements are under processing. All NAISS systems, including Tetralith, Dardel, Bianca, Rackham, Alvis, storage solutions, etc. are currently in operation as planned.

The allocation process

Under NAISS, the allocation process will proceed very similar to previously under SNIC. The name SNAC is changed to NAC, National allocation committee. The NAC members are currently, with the exception of the chair, the same as previous year. Paul Erhart is taking over as chair as decided already last year. The NAC working group is also working in a similar way as last year, with Peter Münger as organizer. The SUPR/SAMS systems are operating as previously with only small effects of the changes from SNIC to NAISS.

NAISS-training

The training activities conducted under SNIC will continue as NAISS-training. The people that coordinated the SNIC-training has been asked for, and are currently working on, suggestions for how the NAISS-training can be organized.

Linköping 2 February 2023

Björn Alling