NAISS information week 7 2023

Dear colleagues,

Here comes the bi-weekly 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 governing structure

Björn Alling, Associate professor in theoretical physics at Linköping university, as been appointed acting director of NAISS by the vice-chancellor of LiU. Also the interim steering-group has been formally appointed with decision-making powers. It consists of Jan-Eric Sundgren (chair), Matts Karlsson, Charlotte Platzer Björkman, Lars Börjesson, Anders Ynnerman, and Patrick Norman.

The process of appointing the NAISS regular steering group is expected to be done within a month. The recruitment of the regular director will then be initiated.

NAISS digital information meeting

On Monday 27 Feb, 14-16, we hold a digital NAISS information meeting open for everyone working within the Swedish HPC-landscape. Björn Alling will present the status of the start-up of NAISS and he and NAISS chairman Jan-Eric Sundgren will be ready to answer questions. Connect via Zoom at the link

https://liu-se.zoom.us/j/61695619702?pwd=YzU4WGlqamU1elBsYmJZZWFkVnJNZz09

NAISS organization and branches

During February, NAISS chair Jan-Eric Sundgren is holding consultations with the leaderships of all ten universities that were part of SNIC. Up to now, 8 meetings have been carried out. This round will be concluded on 23 February. Thereafter consultations will be held with a few universities that was not part of SNIC. This far, the feedback from all the university leaderships has been a full commitment in supporting NAISS and working together to provide the user support, first-line, middle level, and advanced, needed by the Swedish researchers using NAISS resources. When the talks and final negotiations are done, we expect most of these universities to provide support to NAISS on the branch-level. Ideas of co-locating some branches has been lifted and are being discussed. In parallell, NAISS is working on drafting the the texts of formal agreements needed to establish the branch-structure.

The future organization of the advanced users support and advanced application expertise, funded by the universities, couple to the issue of NAISS branches. These discussions are also ongoing both within NAISS and in the broad applications experts community.

Formal agreements for NAISS responsibility and funding for systems and services taken over from SNIC and run by the different centers, e.g. Dardel, Alvis, storage solutions, etc., are currently being written by LiUs legal department. These will closely follow the preliminary assessment discussed between NAISS, SNIC-office and the centers during the fall. Those agreement-texts will be sent out to the centers early in March for review, final discussions, and signing. Then funding from NAISS to the centers for these services can be released.

Work with establishing a new national site for hardware

A working group with representatives from across Sweden is established and have started the work to evaluate possible alternatives for a new National facility for NAISS hardware. A chairman of this group is currently being recruited to accelerate the process.

International relations

The last part of the hand-over from SNIC to NAISS involves participation, collaboration and involvement in different international organizations and boards. This process is being finalized during March.

LiU, as host of NAISS, has with support from the VR, handed in an application to EuroHPC for co-funding for a mid-range system in Sweden. Decisions in this matter is expected during the summer.

NAISS, together with the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration, NeIC, has submitted an application to VR for infrastructure grant for continued Swedish support to the Nordic collaboration in NeIC.

NAISS-training

A model and plan for how training will be conducted and funded under NAISS has been suggested by the people involved in SNIC-training, and positively reviewed by NAISS. We are now awaiting the total budget for training as it depends on the number branches and corresponding number of NAISS-staff. Awaiting the long-term structure of NAISS-training and its funding, suggestions for training events, and requests for NAISS funding for them, can be directly discussed with NAISS.

Linköping 17 February 2023

Björn Alling