2 | December | 2013 | Steve Woods

Supercomputer app store being developed

02/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Today’s Le Monde Informatique asks how the world of high-powered computing (HPC) can be reconciled with the needs of companies as regards simulation and modelling. An American research centre is working of the creation of an app store to provide dedicated applications.

The major problem for supercomputers is that companies are not benefiting from this technology. The modelling and simulation tools based on supercomputer processing could enable companies to create and test prototypes in virtual environments. However, the licence fees required for simulating wind tunnels, furnaces, welding and other processes are expensive. Furthermore, these solutions require multi-core systems and qualified engineers to use them. The solution is to take a HPC treatment and convert it into an application.

image of Blue Mountain supercomputer — Blue Mountain supercomputer. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is working on this via a programme called AweSim. An investment of US $ 6.5 mn. has been made by the US government and private companies such as Procter & Gamble to create an App Store. This should open at the end of the first quarter of 2014 with one application and several web-based tools. The AweSim programme has the ultimate aim of becoming a business and bringing together thousands of applications.

Reducing costs and resorting to open source tools

Tom Lange, Procter & Gamble’s Director of Modelling and Simulation states that these solutions will serve as the group’s logistics. He explains that traditionally, “the software industry is based on the sale of licences which can cost $50,000 dollars per year for an HPC application. This price is beyond the reach of small businesses which are not interested in temporary use”.

AweSim will use open source HPC tools in its applications and is working on partnerships with major HPC software suppliers to make some of their solutions available in the form of applications. OCS is also working on a development kit so that other centres with supercomputers can supply applications. Programme Director Alan Chalker explains how this may work. A vehicle manufacturer wants to produce a solution to reduce the wind resistance of an 18 wheel truck. He will be able to download a CAD file, refine some parameter, click to launch it and use 128 cores out of the OCS supercomputer’s 8,500. The final cost will be US $200-500 for one hour of processing by over 6,000 CPUs. It will take 48 hours to simulate the process and report the results. A test in an actual wind tunnel can cost up to US $100,000.

Greens/EFA urge greater FOSS use in European Parliament

02/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

European Parliament logo Joinup, the EU’s open source public sector news website, reports today that the European Parliament’s Greens/EFA Group is urging the European Parliament to make an earnest attempt to using free and open source software. In a letter to EP President Martin Schulz (PDF), which was released last week Friday, the group links free software and open standards to the Parliament’s transparency obligations.

The text of the letter is reproduced below.

Sir,

Thank you very much for your reply to our letter of 10 July 2013 regarding Free Software and Open Standards in the European Parliament, further to the Decision on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial years 2010 and 2011.

We are very happy to have received the first, and ground-breaking, report on the matter, but we kindly remind you to ensure that the study is completed as well, as requested in the European Parliament resolutions of 10 May 2012 and 17 April 2013, on Parliament’s obligations, in particular under Rule 103 of its Rules of Procedure, with regard to Free Software and Open Standards.

We have commissioned a second opinion on the report to better understand how we can contribute to the Parliament’s efforts in this field. Please find it attached. The opinion concludes that a study on Parliament’s transparency obligations under Rule 103 vis-à-vis its ICT-policies would “result in recommendations to what extent the use of FOSS and open standards is critical to adhere to these principles as a whole”.

We believe that if, as the opinion suggests, these recommendations were to follow from the Rules of Procedure, it would serve the Parliament well to develop them.

Thank you for taking immediate action to remedy the situation.

Yours faithfully,

(signed)
Rebecca Harms

(signed)

Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Co-Presidents
Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament

No political organisation seems to be complete without a modicum of hypocrisy. In this instance, despite the Greens/EFA’s avowed espousal of free and open source software and open standards, readers may be interested to know that the PDF version of the letter was produced using the proprietary Nitro Pro PDF production software, which runs exclusively on the Windows operating system. 😉