Dear reader,
in the past weeks there has been a lot of talk about the Olympic spirit of sports and also about the motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger - Together”. In a figurative sense, this issue of SCC News is equally driven by such “sporting spirit”. The motto “Together more innovative, sustainable, and productive” frames the articles presented here. The high-performance computer HoreKa was officially inaugurated on July 30 and already achieved top rankings for its energy efficiency and speed in June (p. 18). To ensure that the KIT SAP system also continues achieving top rankings in the future, it is currently undergoing a training camp (p. 4). In order to make face-to-face teaching “together” at KIT more secure, the KONKIT electronic contact tracking system has been developed (p. 20).
Research Software Engineering (RSE), which fosters the development of scientific research software, particularly focuses on innovation, openness, sustainability, and productivity. Even in times of pandemic, the Series of Online Research Software Events (SORSE) maintained the vital dialogue between experts (p. 30). A worthwhile approach is also to introduce students early to the methods of developing sustainable research software (p. 44).
With innovation and team spirit, a group of RSEs has created a software suite that smartly combines computing resources from grid, cloud and HPC infrastructures to transparently provide them to researchers as a virtual cluster (p. 8). Yet fast and efficient computing is only one success factor in science; its workflows should also be as productive as possible. To this end, a project group of the DFG-funded Research Training Group GRK 2450 has developed an open-source tool that automatically creates workflow applications for computational materials research (p. 35).
Enjoy reading the new SCC News
Martin Frank, Bernhard Neumair, Martin Nußbaumer, Achim Streit