We are pleased to announce the creation of satellite site for the Gray Scott School in Namur.

Register to the Belgian satellite site of the Gray Scott school here.

Version française de la page.

Gray Scott School

The Gray Scott School is a summer school on HPC in French, from 1 to 12 July, organized by the Laboratoire d'Annecy de Physique des Particules (LAPP) and the French Competence Center, CC-FR. The school which is completly free, is dedicated to programming and optimization on heterogeneous architectures.

The school will cover the optimization of computations on different types of hardware (CPU, GPU), presenting their respective characteristics, architectures and bottlenecks. It will cover both generic optimization methods applicable to all types of hardware, and the various libraries, technologies and languages available to achieve the best possible performance. Ideally, peak machine performance.

• Hardware: CPU, GPU.
• Languages considered : C++17, C++20, CUDA, Fortran, Rust, Python
• Libraries considered: SYCL, Eve, Numpy, cunumerics, legate, Jax, Thrust.
• Compilers considered : G++, Clang++, nvc++, gfortran, nvfortran, dpc++.
• Profiling tools: Valgrind, Maqao, Perf, NSight, Malt and NumaProf.

All methods will be illustrated on simple examples, such as Hadamard products, reductions, barycenter calculations and matrix products, and applied to a single problem: the simulation of a Gray Scott reaction. This problem is simple enough to be understood quickly, yet complex enough to be difficult for compilers to optimize without help. Each method will be broken down into a simple version, using default options, and one or more advanced versions, which will allow us to discuss and quantify their advantages and disadvantages.

For more information about its content, please visit the website of the school.

There is three way to participate to this school:

• Face-to-face at LAPP Annecy with the official trainers of the LAPP - including a BootStrap day: Register here.
• Distance learning, à la carte, at various satellite sites in France (Toulouse, Marseille, Rouen, Reims, Nantes, Montpellier, IDF, others to come...) but also in Namur, Belgium: Register Below
• Remote from your home or organization, à la carte, via live streaming on Youtube: Register here.

The satellite site in Belgium

The satellite site in Belgium will be located at the University of Namur. If you come to the satellite site, you will benefit from:

• Interactions with the official trainers at the LAPP;
• A group support and a good work atmosphere;
• A lunch and a social event on the first day;
• You choose what you want to follow on-site. We encourage you to come on the first day, but you make your program for the other days à la carte.

Register to the Belgian satellite site of the Gray Scott school here.

On the occasion of International Civil Aviation Day, EuroCC Belgium met Safran Aero Boosters in Liège.

Safran Aero Boosters, a Safran group company, is one of Belgium's leading aerospace companies. The company designs, develops and produces low-pressure compressors, equipment and test benches for aerospace propulsion.

Safran Aero Boosters, a technology partner to aerospace engine manufacturers

[EuroCC Belgium] Can you tell us more about Safran Aero Boosters' use of High-Performance Computing? What infrastructure do you use, since when and for what types of developments?

"We have been using HPC for over 15 years! Whether for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in the Aerodynamics Department or more recently to calculate parts in the Mechanical Department, as additive manufacturing enables us to manufacture increasingly complex geometries in an integrated way. By the end of 2024, we hope to have all our calculations carried out using HPC, whether in Aerothermy, Mechanics or Aerodynamics."

Separate HPC infrastructures

The Safran Aero Boosters teams use two different infrastructures: the Tier-1 Lucia  supercomputer in Belgium and the CCRT  in France. "This allows us to operate continuously, even in the event of infrastructure maintenance. They also help us to cope with the growing need for computing hours as we use 10% more CPU hours every year!"

The  brand-new Lucia supercomputer operated by Cenaero (Belgium) Compute infrastructure is among the Top 500 Most Powerful Computers in the World with a computing power of 4 aggregated Pflops.

A set of programs developed with supercomputing

"We have used supercomputers on all our programs: the Leap, the Silvercrest but also the high-speed compressor developed as part of RISE, the maturation and technology demonstration program whose objective it is to offer an engine that consumes 20% less fuel than the Leap engine."

LEAP-1A: Airbus A320 neo engine

[EuroCC Belgium] Aeronautics is a cutting-edge sector with complex and long development cycles. Faced with environmental challenges and ambitious plans for decarbonization, ultra-frugality and then net zero by 2050, we are experiencing an unprecedented acceleration of development and innovation cycles. In this context, what is the role of HPC?

"HPC makes it possible to develop methodologies and parts, and design them at a lower cost, to move forward in terms of optimization. It allows innovative solutions to be tested much faster, which was not the case previously because it had to be done through trial and error. Thanks to HPC, we can run more calculations, consider more complex geometries or extend the computational domain to model the entire part at a lower cost.

The contribution of HPC to the decarbonization of aviation is well established! We have to look for gains wherever possible, this requires us to model the parts in an ever more precise way to go as far as possible in the optimization and therefore improve the performance of our parts to ultimately reduce the overall consumption of the engine. These new developments, driven by the global goal of 'net zero emissions by 2050', would be inconceivable without high-performance computing."

[EuroCC Belgium] What new developments could be achieved with HPC?

"At Safran Aero Boosters, the development of new technologies can only be achieved through high-performance calculations to finely model these increasingly complex parts, which are highly integrated into the engine's architecture.

From an aerodynamic point of view, the phenomena in the fast booster become unsteady, so the methods implemented for the previous generation of booster must evolve, which increases the need for computing resources to understand and optimize the phenomena.

On the aerothermal side, HPC is also essential because it makes it possible to calculate a complete heat exchanger (fins, oil circuit, etc.), which is impossible without the use of a supercomputer."

Benoît Dompierre (right), Cenaero & Leader EuroCC Belgium meets Gilles Ayoub (left), Head of the Mechanical Methods and Calculations team, Safran Aero Boosters.

EuroCC Belgium sat down with Benoît Macq, a Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain and two researchers from UCLouvain to discuss the theme of supercomputing in the service of health.

Health data, combined with artificial intelligence, contributes to "enhanced" health. What does this mean and how does supercomputing enable the development of precision medicine?

“Medical research is being revolutionised thanks to the massive amount of data generated, our ability to collect it and, above all, to process it! In the past, sequencing the entire genome of a human was a huge financial investment. Today, it costs about $100... In parallel with data acquisition, imaging has also developed strongly.”

“To build his clinical reasoning, the doctor benefits from massive data (Big Data). Without an algorithm to help process this data, the doctor is no longer able to make a decision.”

Digital twins and cancer research

“As an example, I'd mention the research that is being done in the field of cancer. All the data collected (biological data, imaging, etc.) makes it possible to establish increasingly precise diagnoses and treatments.”

“To create a digital twin of a tumour, we perform a model of cell proliferation of the tumour based on the person's DNA and the transformations of the tumour's DNA. It is then possible to establish a personalised treatment and to test, in silico, drugs on the patient's digital twin. This approach allows us to move towards a personalized treatment, i.e. specific to each individual and by type of tumor.”

“With this approach, we are moving towards what we call "personalised medicine".

The study of alcohol addiction using data from the UK Biobank

A team from UCLouvain is currently studying alcohol addiction based on data from the UK Biobank, one of the largest health databases, containing hundreds of thousands of subjects, 50,000 of whom have been imaged.

“For these 50,000 subjects, we have about 80 terabytes (imaging, 3D video). We use this data to develop models for predicting alcohol dependence and to establish an abstinence program. Using certain models, we search for the entire biology of alcoholism based on DNA, observations and brain imaging. Based on this, it is possible for us to build an artificial intelligence model on this basis.”

“Thanks to models developed with the help of AI, we can detect the impact of alcoholism on the very structure of the brain at an early stage. The developed models can even distinguish between occasional drinkers and abstinent people, which a doctor is unable to diagnose based on the same data. This research promises major advances in the fight against alcoholism and its consequences.”

This research will be the subject of a future publication.

Quentin Dessain, F.R.S.-FNRS PhD Research Fellow, UCLouvain.

Segmentation of Multiple Sclerosis

“For my part, I worked on the segmentation of multiple sclerosis in 3D. We found that the model collapses when transposed to data from another hospital. This means that the data depends greatly on the conditions under which the data is obtained; A scan of the same patient performed in two separate hospitals produces significantly different images. This is a major hurdle to generating a reliable AI model. The idea is to develop robust models that manage to overcome these obstacles in order to be reliable regardless of the data source. To do this, we used Lucia, Cenaero's supercomputer, on which we ran 150 experiments for 7 hours each. It is important to consider changes in MRI acquisition parameters. From one resonance to another, there is a great variability in the data. The goal is to have a training model and be able to apply it in any environment.

Benoît Gérin, RESEARCH ASSISTANT, SST/ICTM -- Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTM), UCLouvain

In silico medicine

“In parallel with the diagnostic activities described above, we are also working on treatment plans," says Benoît Macq, "Like ChatGPT, generative AI models are capable of coming up with new molecules to accelerate pharmaceutical research. Today, it takes 10 years to create a drug and only 3% of drugs make it to the final clinical phase and enter the market. The objective is to reduce the 10 years to 3 years and to no longer have a 3% success rate but a 10%!”

“Thanks to the combination of Drug Discovery and Artificial Intelligence, we are entering what is known as in silico medicine. This means developing treatment plans, diagnostics, and drug discovery using large databases, simulations and models. All of this is possible thanks to supercomputers.”

The Strategic Role of High-Performance Computing

“For us, supercomputing has become essential! It allows us to process large medical databases and compute prediction and response models. We also use "trial and error" to identify the best combination: drug – immunotherapy – radiotherapy, these trials being carried out on digital twins. Supercomputing is unquestionably of great importance for the medicine of tomorrow!”

CFD through the lens of supercomputing

Join us in this enginaging webinar as we explore the frontier of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) through the lens of high-performance computing. Liam McManus from Siemens will kick off the event by discussing the advantages of GPU-accelerated CFD with Simcenter STAR-CCM+, focusing on efficiency and performance enhancement.  Following Liam, Monica Ramirez from Daikin and Brecht Devolder from DEME will showcase a practical use case, demonstrating the real-world application and benefits of these advanced computational strategies. Discover how leveraging high-performance computing can transform your CFD simulations. 

Schedule

12:00-12:05 Welcome

12:05-13:00 Liam McManus | Siemens | Advantages of GPU-accelerated CFD with Simcenter STAR-CCM+, focusing on efficiency and performance enhancement. 
13:00-13:30 Monica Ramirez | Daikin | Maximizing efficiency: Harnessing the power of VSC for CFD analysis by Daikin.

13:30-14:00 Brecht Devolder | DEME | Enhancing sustainable marine solutions and operations by STAR-CCM+ CFD simulations on a supercomputer.

Speakers

Liam McManus | Siemens 

In this webinar, Liam McManus, a Technical Product Manager for Simcenter STAR-CCM+, will introduce how GPU-accelerated CFD can reduce the turnaround time of your CFD applications. The talk will provide an overview of the CFD capabilities of Simcenter STAR-CCM+. Liam will then discuss GPU-accelerated CFD, highlighting applications that can currently benefit from this technology, performance benchmarks between CPU and GPU nodes at VSC, and some tips and tricks on maximising GPU performance. 

Monica Ramirez | Daikin

As a Development Engineer specializing in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) at Daikin Europe, I focus on designing and optimizing HVAC systems to meet energy efficiency, comfort, and sustainability standards. In this webinar Monica will elaborate on Daikin harnesses the power of VSC for CFD analysis. 

Brecht Devolder | DEME



DEME is a leading marine contractor and a front runner in innovation and new technologies. DEME’s vision is to work towards a sustainable future by offering solutions for global marine challenges. Brecht Devolder, expert engineer CFD, will present how DEME utilizes STAR-CCM+ on VSC to make CFD simulations feasible. The presentation will highlight the critical role of VSC in providing the computational power necessary for DEME's advanced CFD simulations, illustrating how these efforts contribute significantly to enhance our sustainable marine solutions and operations.

Practical info

Date: 17th of April 2024 
Timing: 12:00 to 14:00 

Registrations 

Participation is free of charge, but please register for the webinar via this link. 

Our partner, The VSC (Flemish Supercomputer Center - www.vscentrum.be) is looking for talented, self-driven individuals to join their world-renowned team in Flanders:

• Collaborator local VSC Tier-2 support team | UAntwerp | Full-time |
   
  Together with your colleagues, you will support users on the VSC infrastructure. Apply here (deadline 19/02/2024)
   
• ​Collaborators VSC’s Tier-0 support team and the upcoming EuroHPC EPICURE project | UAntwerp | Full-time
  
  The EuroHPC EPICURE project focuses on “application support”: efficiency of the installation, enabling, and porting of applications to the different EuroHPC supercomputer architectures, and improving of code scalability and performance, in collaboration with the support teams at, all currently, 5 petascale, 3 pre-exascale and 2 exascale EuroHPC sites. Together with your colleagues, you will support Tier-0 users on LUMI and other European Tier-0 machines offered by the EuroHPC JU  and participate in the EPICURE tasks for the University of Antwerp. Apply here (deadline 19/02/2024)