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The RES Users’ Conference is consolidated as an annual meeting point for knowledge sharing and results dissemination

Events
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04 Oct 2017
The RES Users’ Conference brought together researchers working with HPC technologies, RES technicians and RES coordinators. More than 110 participants attended this event, which took place in Santiago de Compostela on September 28.

The RES Users’ Conference started with a welcome session by Sergi Girona, BSC Operations director and RES manager, and Javier García Tobío, director of CESGA, the local organizing centre. After that, Sergi Girona presented the updates in the RES, highlighting the high increase in computing capacity of the network (from 2 to 12 PFlops), thanks to the new supercomputer MareNostrum 4, the distribution of MareNostrum 3 among RES nodes and the updates in the supercomputers of different centres. Oriol Pineda, PRACE Peer Review director, talked about the different supercomputers available in Europe and encouraged RES users to request HPC resources in the current PRACE call, which is open until November 21. Ulises Cortés, coordinator of the Artificial Intelligence group in the BSC, gave the plenary conference, which was focused on the multiple uses of artificial intelligence in several scientific and technological disciplines.

Carmen Vela, Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation, and Francisco Conde, Conselleiro of Economy, Employment and Industry of Xunta de Galicia, presided the institutional session. Francisco Conde congratulated CESGA for its 25 years working as the Supercomputing Centre of Galicia and stressed the importance of common HPC resources available for Spanish researchers through RES. Carmen Vela stated that supercomputing technologies are essential in all future areas and that the return of investments is granted. In addition, she explained that, despite the budgetary constraints, they are working to keep the strategic position of Spain in the international context by acquiring new and powerful supercomputers.

The Chairman of the RES Users Committee, Javier Junquera, ended the morning session presenting the functions carried out by this committee, which represents users and voices their concerns. In addition, he encouraged users to share their experiences and to send their comments to the committee through the online form in the RES intranet. After this conference, a debate took place among various participants on the best measures that could be taken to adapt RES services to de diverse needs of research projects.

In the afternoon, four parallel scientific sessions were organized and researchers from the four scientific areas presented the most outstanding results obtained in RES or PRACE projects. This exchange of experiences was also seen in poster presentations during coffee breaks and lunchtime. To encourage the interaction among participants, a social event was organized at the end of the conference, which consisted of a guided tour in the historic centre of Santiago de Compostela.

In this year edition, the RES Users’ Conference was organized jointly with the scientific seminar on Marine Services and Supercomputing (September 27) and the HPC Advisory Council Spain Conference (September 29). The large number of participants that gathered these three events consolidate the RES Users’ Conference as the central meeting point for supercomputing experts in Spain.

You can see the pictures of the event.

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