With this year's All Hands over, it is worth going through the notes, and summarise at least the plenaries for the benefit of those who didn't have a chance to go. I am sure 2010 will be remembered for the amazing quality of the plenaries, and quite a lot of excellent content in the parallel sessions as well.
Overall there was a theme of "bridging the gap" - or is it a chasm? - to take software from its initial deployment with limited uptake to a broader user base, the place where prototypes either fail or become successful. Prof Dan Atkins from UMich spoke about this chasm, and how to bridge it, and about UK's e-science and its impact. Prof Alex Szalay from Johns Hopkins spoke about coping with data volumes in the context of Amdahl's law, ie the advantages - or (eventually) lack of advantages - of parallelisation, and the importance of simulation - we can today simulate things made of 1,000,000,000 interacting pieces, which was seen as impossible just a short time ago, and we expect to soon be able to process 1000 times that - so simulations and the data they generate will have an increasingly larger impact on research and society as a whole. Our very own prof, Carole Goble, spoke about the long tail scientist, all the many who do research but are not part of big groups, and how this tail is getting "fatter" (or how to make it fatter), and even getting "normal" people involved like Galaxy Zoo did - but to do this, you (ie us, infrastructure and software people, e-scientists) need to "walk in their shoes"; and also by rewarding people for engaging and sharing - no prizes for second place or for developing standards, so people feel possessive about their work, and they may not realise the benefits of sharing and collaborating until they've tried.
I can only encourage you to browse the programme for presentations. Dan Atkin's plenary even contains a transcription! Make yourself a cuppa and go read them now.
Showing posts with label AHM 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AHM 2010. Show all posts
Monday, 27 September 2010
Monday, 20 September 2010
All change at All Hands and stats galore!
Like many people I was attending the All Hands Meeting in Cardiff last week and the first EGI Technical Forum meeting which was taking place in Amsterdam, home to the EGI headquarters.
However before I had to leave AHM I did attend some interesting sessions on "Sharing, Collaboration and Interfaces for e-Research" featuring "BlogMyData" which Jason has already mentioned.
I have to thank Andrew Richards, Director of the NGS, for giving my presentation in the "Enhancing Community Intelligence for e-Science" workshop which I unfortunately couldn't attend due to being on a plane to Amsterdam! The organiser Alex Voss had asked me to report on some of the statistics that the NGS collects in its usual day-to-day running. This includes the data from the user application forms, the NGS member sites and much more. The invitation to present on these stats was very timely as we have recently released a new service to users on the NGS homepage.
We have made a selection of statisitics publicly available on the NGS website including statistics by research area, institution, NGS usage over time, funding sources and information sources and more. The link can be found on the right hand side of the home page underneath the latest poll.
Meanwhile at the EGI conference in Amsterdam I met up with the EGI dissemination team for the first time as well other dissemination people from several other NGI's. It's amazing no matter how far apart the countries, we all have the same problems and challenges in getting the word out there about grid computing and hunting down those user success stories! Watch out for more user case studies from all over Europe!
However before I had to leave AHM I did attend some interesting sessions on "Sharing, Collaboration and Interfaces for e-Research" featuring "BlogMyData" which Jason has already mentioned.
I have to thank Andrew Richards, Director of the NGS, for giving my presentation in the "Enhancing Community Intelligence for e-Science" workshop which I unfortunately couldn't attend due to being on a plane to Amsterdam! The organiser Alex Voss had asked me to report on some of the statistics that the NGS collects in its usual day-to-day running. This includes the data from the user application forms, the NGS member sites and much more. The invitation to present on these stats was very timely as we have recently released a new service to users on the NGS homepage.
We have made a selection of statisitics publicly available on the NGS website including statistics by research area, institution, NGS usage over time, funding sources and information sources and more. The link can be found on the right hand side of the home page underneath the latest poll.
Meanwhile at the EGI conference in Amsterdam I met up with the EGI dissemination team for the first time as well other dissemination people from several other NGI's. It's amazing no matter how far apart the countries, we all have the same problems and challenges in getting the word out there about grid computing and hunting down those user success stories! Watch out for more user case studies from all over Europe!
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Bigger data and Faster Horses
Alex Szalay of John Hopkins University and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey spoke at All Hands this morning.
His talk was about the science that can be done when you simply have too much data to store or process and your first task is working out which bits you need to throw away.
Among the many interesting points he made was that, by Amdahl's Law, modern computers are unbalanced if they are used for data-driven research.
CPUs are fast. Modern multi-core CPUs can crunch numbers at extra-ordinary rates. But we gain very little from this if we can't feed them the numbers as fast as they can crunch them.
At best, the numbers have to be loaded from memory and, on the timescales at which a computer works, memory access is slow. At worst, they come from disk and disk access is much, much slower.
Modern CPUs hide the generally sluggishness of memory by keeping data that has been used or may soon be used within a small but very fast caches. As a block of data is transferred from the main memory to cache, nearby blocks are copied too.
Disks and operating systems use a similar approach - whenever a user requests a block of data to be transferred from disk to memory, the blocks that follow it are transferred too.
You only get the advantage of the memory caches and disk access if you are reading the data in one big long stream.
Prof. Szalay likened this to watching the results of a laboratory experiment as it runs. He described computer systems - which he called Data Scopes - designed so that the speed at which data can be accessed is as near as possible to the speed at which it can be processed. You carefully layout your data in the 'scope and just let its comparatively low powered CPUs crunch away.
It is very different from the current approach to High Performance Computing. He ended his talk with a quote attributed to Henry Ford - an example of why 'more of the same' is not always an option:
His talk was about the science that can be done when you simply have too much data to store or process and your first task is working out which bits you need to throw away.
Among the many interesting points he made was that, by Amdahl's Law, modern computers are unbalanced if they are used for data-driven research.
CPUs are fast. Modern multi-core CPUs can crunch numbers at extra-ordinary rates. But we gain very little from this if we can't feed them the numbers as fast as they can crunch them.
At best, the numbers have to be loaded from memory and, on the timescales at which a computer works, memory access is slow. At worst, they come from disk and disk access is much, much slower.
Modern CPUs hide the generally sluggishness of memory by keeping data that has been used or may soon be used within a small but very fast caches. As a block of data is transferred from the main memory to cache, nearby blocks are copied too.
Disks and operating systems use a similar approach - whenever a user requests a block of data to be transferred from disk to memory, the blocks that follow it are transferred too.
You only get the advantage of the memory caches and disk access if you are reading the data in one big long stream.
Prof. Szalay likened this to watching the results of a laboratory experiment as it runs. He described computer systems - which he called Data Scopes - designed so that the speed at which data can be accessed is as near as possible to the speed at which it can be processed. You carefully layout your data in the 'scope and just let its comparatively low powered CPUs crunch away.
It is very different from the current approach to High Performance Computing. He ended his talk with a quote attributed to Henry Ford - an example of why 'more of the same' is not always an option:
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
It's good to be back at All Hands and catch up with all the Old Hands, and shake New Hands as well.
As usual it is necessary to clone oneself for the parallel sessions, keep track of all the discussions, keep the todo list up to date, sniff around for new things, while simultaneously keeping up with email back home, other projects ticking along at home, documents, proposals, reports, arrangements. The mental equivalent of an octopus. All in a day's work. Hey ho.
As usual it is necessary to clone oneself for the parallel sessions, keep track of all the discussions, keep the todo list up to date, sniff around for new things, while simultaneously keeping up with email back home, other projects ticking along at home, documents, proposals, reports, arrangements. The mental equivalent of an octopus. All in a day's work. Hey ho.
Seen at All Hands
The All Hands meeting exists so that those involved in one branch of e-Intrastructure / e-Science / e-Research / e-Social-Science / e-Whatever can see what those in the other e-*s are up to.
One project that particularly caught my eye was BlogMyData.
Much academic research takes place in corridors, pubs and even - occasionally - in the loo. Researchers will discuss their latest discoveries with colleagues when they bump into one another on the way to somewhere else - and get a new perspective or a new idea as they do so. Call it serendipity at work - or possibly serendipity in the bar of the Dog and Duck.
This is the kind of material that occasionally appears as `Bloggs, Fred (Personal Communcation)' in papers.
BlogMyData extends this chatter about the work to researchers who are in different institutions and so - unless they happen to be at All Hands - are very unlikely to be in the same coffee room, or pub, at the same time.
It allows researchers to post visualisations of the data they are working on blogs which can be read - and commented on - by collaborators. It combines two projects: the Godiva 2 visualisation package from Reading and the LabBlog blogging tool from platform.
This has the big advantage that the data and the conversation will be recorded for future reference unlike, say, a chat in the bar or an unexpected encounter in the gents...
One project that particularly caught my eye was BlogMyData.
Much academic research takes place in corridors, pubs and even - occasionally - in the loo. Researchers will discuss their latest discoveries with colleagues when they bump into one another on the way to somewhere else - and get a new perspective or a new idea as they do so. Call it serendipity at work - or possibly serendipity in the bar of the Dog and Duck.
This is the kind of material that occasionally appears as `Bloggs, Fred (Personal Communcation)' in papers.
BlogMyData extends this chatter about the work to researchers who are in different institutions and so - unless they happen to be at All Hands - are very unlikely to be in the same coffee room, or pub, at the same time.
It allows researchers to post visualisations of the data they are working on blogs which can be read - and commented on - by collaborators. It combines two projects: the Godiva 2 visualisation package from Reading and the LabBlog blogging tool from platform.
This has the big advantage that the data and the conversation will be recorded for future reference unlike, say, a chat in the bar or an unexpected encounter in the gents...
Hello from AHM
A selection of NGS staff are all now settled into conference mode at the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting in a wet Cardiff.
The stand was put up last night and our first demo was held this morning. A big thanks to Jonathan Churchill whose demo of the UI/WMS managed to pull in a substantial crowd despite a quiet start to the event as people continue arrive during the morning.
Jonathan will be doing a follow up demo this lunchtime on the "gLite WMS Enabled NGS Applications Portal" so pop by our stand with your lunch if you are in Cardiff!
The conference proper kicks off this afternoon with the first themes and workshops. I'll be going to the "Sharing, collaboration and interfaces for e-Research" which looks as though it will have some interesting presentations about user tools.
The stand was put up last night and our first demo was held this morning. A big thanks to Jonathan Churchill whose demo of the UI/WMS managed to pull in a substantial crowd despite a quiet start to the event as people continue arrive during the morning.
Jonathan will be doing a follow up demo this lunchtime on the "gLite WMS Enabled NGS Applications Portal" so pop by our stand with your lunch if you are in Cardiff!
The conference proper kicks off this afternoon with the first themes and workshops. I'll be going to the "Sharing, collaboration and interfaces for e-Research" which looks as though it will have some interesting presentations about user tools.
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Gearing up for AHM
Yes I know it may seem like a long way away but the preparation for this years All Hands Meeting has already started at the NGS. The call for papers has been out for a while and eventually (after the 2nd extension) closed on Monday. Registration was opened last Wednesday so if you feel like being organised you can register now! I imagine that a lot of people will be waiting to see if their papers are accepted before registering.
There will be a good turn out from the NGS as always with several papers submitted from our team and an exhibition stand publicising the NGS and the NGI in conjunction with GridPP. I'm not sure what we'll be demo-ing on our stand yet but I''m sure it will be something exciting.
As many people know the AHM unfortunately clashes with the inaugural EGI meeting in Amsterdam but all is not lost as there are direct flights several times a day from Cardiff to Amsterdam so it may be possible to attend both meetings!
I'm just glad that the AHM has moved back to September as it means that I have the quieter months of July and August to get everything ready for the event!
There will be a good turn out from the NGS as always with several papers submitted from our team and an exhibition stand publicising the NGS and the NGI in conjunction with GridPP. I'm not sure what we'll be demo-ing on our stand yet but I''m sure it will be something exciting.
As many people know the AHM unfortunately clashes with the inaugural EGI meeting in Amsterdam but all is not lost as there are direct flights several times a day from Cardiff to Amsterdam so it may be possible to attend both meetings!
I'm just glad that the AHM has moved back to September as it means that I have the quieter months of July and August to get everything ready for the event!
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Time has not yet run out
If you were thinking about submitting an abstract to the UK All Hands Meeting but hadn't quite got round to submitting anything then time is still on your side!
The deadline has been extended to the 7th of June so there is still time to work on an abstract. This will be the 9th AHM meeting and every year more and more NGS users come to present their work.
As well as being an opportunity to meet the e-infrastructure providers, AHM also gives users the opportunity to feedback directly to tool developers and see what the latest developments are in e-infrastructure - basically the tools that they will be using in the future.
As if you needed another incentive, authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit full papers (after the conference) to be considered for inclusion in a special edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (the conference proceedings will not be published).
So if you'd like to join us in Cardiff this September, make sure you get your abstract in by the 7th of June!
The deadline has been extended to the 7th of June so there is still time to work on an abstract. This will be the 9th AHM meeting and every year more and more NGS users come to present their work.
As well as being an opportunity to meet the e-infrastructure providers, AHM also gives users the opportunity to feedback directly to tool developers and see what the latest developments are in e-infrastructure - basically the tools that they will be using in the future.
As if you needed another incentive, authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit full papers (after the conference) to be considered for inclusion in a special edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A (the conference proceedings will not be published).
So if you'd like to join us in Cardiff this September, make sure you get your abstract in by the 7th of June!
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
It's that time of year again
Last years UK All Hands Meeting is still fresh in the minds of many people but we're now beginning to look ahead to this years.
The AHM has been moved back to its traditional slot of September and will be held in Cardiff from the 13th - 15th - a week when every other conference also seems to be on judging by my inbox!
The call is however out now for workshops for this event and all the relevant information is on the new AHM website.
The AHM has been moved back to its traditional slot of September and will be held in Cardiff from the 13th - 15th - a week when every other conference also seems to be on judging by my inbox!
The call is however out now for workshops for this event and all the relevant information is on the new AHM website.
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