BioWorkbench: A High-Performance Framework for Managing and Analyzing Bioinformatics Experiments

Advances in sequencing techniques have led to exponential growth in biological data, demanding the development of large-scale bioinformatics experiments. Because these experiments are computation- and data-intensive, they require high-performance computing (HPC) techniques and can benefit from specialized technologies such as Scientific Workflow Management Systems (SWfMS) and databases. In this work, we present BioWorkbench, a framework for managing and analyzing bioinformatics experiments. This framework automatically collects provenance data, including both performance data from workflow execution and data from the scientific domain of the workflow application. Provenance data can be analyzed through a web application that abstracts a set of queries to the provenance database, simplifying access to provenance information. We evaluate BioWorkbench using three case studies: SwiftPhylo, a phylogenetic tree assembly workflow; SwiftGECKO, a comparative genomics workflow; and RASflow, a RASopathy analysis workflow. We analyze each workflow from both computational and scientific domain perspectives, by using queries to a provenance and annotation database. Some of these queries are available as a pre-built feature of the BioWorkbench web application. Through the provenance data, we show that the framework is scalable and achieves high-performance, reducing up to 98% of the case studies execution time. We also show how the application of machine learning techniques can enrich the analysis process

Enhancing Energy Production with Exascale HPC Methods

High Performance Computing (HPC) resources have become the key actor for achieving more ambitious challenges in many disciplines. In this step beyond, an explosion on the available parallelism and the use of special purpose processors are crucial. With such a goal, the HPC4E project applies new exascale HPC techniques to energy industry simulations, customizing them if necessary, and going beyond the state-of-the-art in the required HPC exascale simulations for different energy sources. In this paper, a general overview of these methods is presented as well as some specific preliminary results.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme (2014-2020) under the HPC4E Project (www.hpc4e.eu), grant agreement n° 689772, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the CODEC2 project (TIN2015-63562-R), and from the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation through Rede Nacional de Pesquisa (RNP). Computer time on Endeavour cluster is provided by the Intel Corporation, which enabled us to obtain the presented experimental results in uncertainty quantification in seismic imagingPostprint (author's final draft

Meeting the design challenges of nano-CMOS electronics: an introduction to an upcoming EPSRC pilot project

The years of ‘happy scaling’ are over and the fundamental challenges that the semiconductor industry faces, at both technology and device level, will impinge deeply upon the design of future integrated circuits and systems. This paper provides an introduction to these challenges and gives an overview of the Grid infrastructure that will be developed as part of a recently funded EPSRC pilot project to address them, and we hope, which will revolutionise the electronics design industry

The architecture of discovery net : towards grid-based discovery services

Imperial Users onl

Comprehensible Control for Researchers and Developers facing Data Challenges

The DARE platform enables researchers and their developers to exploit more capabilities to handle complexity and scale in data, computation and collaboration. Today’s challenges pose increasing and urgent demands for this combination of capabilities. To meet technical, economic and governance constraints, application communities must use use shared digital infrastructure principally via virtualisation and mapping. This requires precise abstractions that retain their meaning while their implementations and infrastructures change. Giving specialists direct control over these capabilities with detail relevant to each discipline is necessary for adoption. Research agility, improved power and retained return on intellectual investment incentivise that adoption. We report on an architecture for establishing and sustaining the necessary optimised mappings and early evaluations of its feasibility with two application communities.PublishedSan Diego (CA, USA)3IT. Calcolo scientific

Applying future Exascale HPC methodologies in the energy sector

The appliance of new exascale HPC techniques to energy industry simulations is absolutely needed nowadays. In this sense, the common procedure is to customize these techniques to the specific energy sector they are of interest in order to go beyond the state-of-the-art in the required HPC exascale simulations. With this aim, the HPC4E project is developing new exascale methodologies to three different energy sources that are the present and the future of energy: wind energy production and design, efficient combustion systems for biomass-derived fuels (biogas), and exploration geophysics for hydrocarbon reservoirs. In this work, the general exascale advances proposed as part of HPC4E and its outcome to specific results in different domains are presented.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme (2014-2020) under the HPC4E Project (www.hpc4e.eu), grant agreement n° 689772, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the CODEC2 project (TIN2015-63562-R), and from the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation through Rede Nacional de Pesquisa (RNP). Computer time on Endeavour cluster is provided by the Intel Corporation, which enabled us to obtain the presented experimental results in uncertainty quantification in seismic imaging.Postprint (author's final draft