ASEAN HPC Activities

Achievement to dates:

ASEAN HPC Fugaku trial application

A*CRC in Singapore submitted 11 project proposals to RIST Japan on behalf of investigators from 4 different ASEAN countries:

• Thailand (4), Malaysia (3), Indonesia (2) and Philippines (2)

Research areas covered include Matter, Materials and Chemistry (7) and Information and Computer Science (4).

Examples of application software include CP2K, Quantum ESPRESSO, Gaussian, VASP, GROMACS, TensorFlow, PyTORCH and other customised software.

List of Institutions Involved in these projects:

• Malaysia’s University Malaya,
• Indonesia’s Politeknik Statistika STIS and Labmath,
• Philippines’s University of the Philippines Los Baños and University of the Philippines Diliman, and
• Thailand’s Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology (VISTEC), King Mongkut’s University of Technology, National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) and Suranaree University of Technology All projects are trialling the use of Fugaku for about 6 months.

EU-ASEAN HPC School

• The upcoming EU-ASEAN High-Performance Computing (HPC) School will be held in presence at Kasetsart University, Bangkok, between 5-10 December 2022.  (http://hpcschool.net)

• 2021 EU-ASEAN HPC School

The first “EU-ASEAN High-Performance Computing (HPC) Virtual School: System Design and HPC Applications” concluded on 9 July, with a closing event and public panel discussion capping a week-long learning experience for participating students from all ASEAN Member States.

60 Applications accepted for the first Virtual School from all 10 AMS with the following breakdown: Indonesia (17), Thailand (14), Philippines (9), Malaysia (7), Singapore (4), Vietnam (4), Myanmar (2), Brunei Darussalam (1), Cambodia (1), Lao PDR (1).

Since this event was a virtual school, the organisers accepted another 75 passive students who are not graded observers and their participation limited on the practical exercises which included participants from India.

Indonesia (29), Malaysia (12), Philippines (11), Thailand (9), Singapore (4), Vietnam (4), Myanmar (3), Brunei Darussalam (1), India (1), Lao PDR (1).

On the last day panel discussion, the event has been extended to the public and streamed to the Facebook and YouTube channels of both ASEAN and EU accounts. The webinar room was attended by 174 participants on top of the zoom class (students and distinguished guests).

Students engaged in topics on HPC and HPC applications with international luminaries from the EU, ASEAN and Japan, with hands-on and virtual exercises. Cutting-edge technologies were presented, including MeluXina, a supercomputer from the LuxProvide HPC Centre in Luxembourg that was recently launched in June.

Students also took part in a tutorial on LUMI, a EuroHPC world-class supercomputer in Finland. Lecturers from RIKEN Center for Computational Science Japan, home of the world’s number one supercomputer Fugaku, discussed ways in which natural disaster risks and life science can be successfully tackled with HPC among other subjects.

EU-ASEAN HPC schools are organized by the ASEAN HPC Task Force and carried out in the framework of the Enhanced Regional EU-ASEAN Dialogue Instrument (E-READI)*.

*The Enhanced Regional EU-ASEAN Dialogue Instrument (E-READI) is a development cooperation instrument that facilitates cooperation and dialogue between the EU and ASEAN in policy areas of joint interest. Drawing on the EU’s experience of regional integration, E-READI further strengthens both the ASEAN regional integration process as well as the overall ASEAN-EU strategic partnership

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Annexes / series of activities to date:

May 2018:

• ASEAN HPC initiative was endorsed by COSTI
• ASEAN HPC Taskforce (TF) was formed to discuss technical configurations, AMS requirements and roadmap.

Sept 2018: Singapore hosted 1^st ASEAN HPCTF meeting

Mar 2019: Singapore hosted 2^nd ASEAN HPCTF meeting

Apr 2019: The taskforce went for a Japan study trip to visit Japan’s data centre that was hosting the K-Computer.

Jun 2019: ASEAN HPC Roadmap was endorsed by COSTI

Sept 2019: Thailand hosted the 3^rd ASEAN HPCTF meeting

Apr 2020: 4^th ASEAN HPCTF meeting was held virtually (via Webex)

Oct 2020: 5^th ASEAN HPCTF meeting was held virtually (via Webex)

Toward POC shared HPC infrastructure:

• MOU between SG’s A*CRC and JP’s RIKEN-CCS signed
• Demonstrate a shared compute and storage resources for end users from ASEAN HPCTF institutes to A*CRC
• To embark on POC Infrastructure encompassing compute, storage, and network resources between A*CRC and R-CCS

Sept 2021:  6^th ASEAN HPCTF meeting was held virtually (via Webex)

Mar 2022:  7^th ASEAN HPCTF meeting was held virtually (via Webex)

Mar 2019: 1^st EU-ASEAN High Performing Computing (HPC) Coordination Group Meeting in Singapore

Nov 2019: 2^nd EU-ASEAN High Performing Computing (HPC) Coordination Group Meeting  in Luxembourg

Dec 2019: Expert Training and Study Visit to Barcelona Supercomputing Center

2020: Synthesis Report: EU-ASEAN High Performance Computing (HPC) Study Expert Mapping of ASEAN policy orientations and related HPC research infrastructures

Jul 2020: EU-ASEAN WEBINAR: High-Performance Computing (HPC) – COVID 19

Mar 2021: Super-Computing Asia 2021 (SCA21) EU-ASEAN-Japan Symposium, 4 Mar 2021

The level of collaboration between the European Union, Japan and the ASEAN region in high performance computing (HPC) has an untapped potential with the recent developments and cooperation in various areas including tackling challenges such as the current COVID19 pandemic. Stakeholders within the ASEAN HPC working group, EU HPC initiatives, and in Japan, including ‘Fugaku’ the world’s top supercomputer, presented updates on these collaborations. New challenges and trends in HPC and data infrastructure were introduced. These include talent development and HPC skill capacity building via the E-READI programme in ASEAN, and the organisation of a digital HPC school. (https://www.sc-asia.org/2021/programme/)

Jul 2021: 1^st EU-ASEAN HPC School, “EU-ASEAN HPC Virtual School: System Design and HPC Applications”, between 5 – 9 July 2021

• Number of applicants: 279
• Number of Accepted Applicants: 60
• Number of Accepted Applicants as Passive Students: 75

• School Coordinators: 4

• Module Coordinators: 5

• Speakers: 14

• Lectures: 22

Mar 2022: Super-Computing Asia 2022 (SCA22) EU-ASEAN-Japan Symposium, 3 Mar 2022

Following the success of its first iteration in 2021, the EU-ASEAN-Japan Symposium was once again held at the Supercomputing Asia 2022 Conference. The original stakeholders of the ASEAN HPC Task Force, the European Union, the ASEAN Committee on Science, Technology, and Innovation and Japanese research institutions presented updates on their collaborations under the theme “HPC International Infrastructures” during the hybrid virtual/in-person symposium. The symposium was supported by the Enhanced Regional EU-ASEAN Dialogue Instrument (E-READI) in coordination with the European Commission, Directorate General for Research and Innovation (DG R&I). The symposium was co-chaired by Dr Zurina Moktar, Head, Science and Technology Division, ASEAN Secretariat, Lukas Gajdos, Deputy Head of Delegation to ASEAN, and Prof Satoshi Matsuoka, Director, RIKEN Centre for Computational Science. (https://asean.org/eu-asean-japan-symposium-discussions-focus-on-high-performance-computing/; https://www.sc-asia.org/programme-day-3/)

Dec 2022: 2^nd EU-ASEAN HPC School, “EU-ASEAN HPC Virtual School: System Design and HPC Applications”, between 5 – 10 December 2022

• Number of applicants: 282
• Number of Accepted Applicants: TBA
• Number of Accepted Applicants as Passive Students: TBA
• Speakers & Lecturers (29, some more to be announced)

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Gallery

Japan Study trip in April 2019