NEWS Gonzalo Rodrigo and Abel Souza from the Department of Computing Science at Umeå University are student volunteers at SC16, one of the biggest conferences for high performance computing.
SC16 brings together the international supercomputing community—a gathering of scientists, engineers, researchers, educators, programmers, system administrators and developers that is nowhere else to find in the world.
SCinet, one of the fastest, most innovative computer network is built during the SC16 conference. SCinet designs, builds and operates the high-speed network supporting all aspects of the conference, from wireless everywhere to network drops on the show floor.
A team of more than 200 volunteers from industry, research and education and government in 18 countries collaborate to build SCinet. They have installed 56 miles of fiber optic cable and 200+ wireless access points that can support more than 10,000 simultaneous users on the conference wifi.
As volunteers Gonzalo Rodrigo is working with the WAN-team and Abel Souza with the wireless-team. For Gonzalo it is for the second time.
– I have been a student volunteer in SCinet. SCinet is the organization deploying the network at super computing. As a student I spend 2-3 days helping laying fiber in the booth space. The rest of the days I am part of the WAN team, helping on data management and testing. This team is responsible for connecting the conference network with "the world", this implies connecting with research networks all over the world over high speed, 100G, links, says Gonzalo Rodrigo.
According to Gonzalo Rodrigo the total bandwidth towards the world will this year be just over 3 Tbps, with 30 100G circuits connecting to research locations across the world and 4 10G for regular Internet.
– Also, this years, SCinet is setting up a high speed metroLAN within the conference space moving over 5 Tbps, says Gonzalo Rodrigo.
There are a lot of experience, connections and meetings that Gonzalo and the other participants have from this conference.
– Through the student program I got to meet students like me from all over the world. My work is related to HPC infrastructure, I have met more EU PhD students from that field at this program that in the last 4 years in Sweden.
– It is also a good opportunity to talk to future employers, collaborators, and even find a mentor to gain visibility and plan for the future, says Gonzalo Rodrigo.
Working as a volunteer also gives an understanding of the complexities of organizing a scientific conference of the size of supercomputing.
Photo above: Abel Souza and Gonzalo Rodrigo from Umeå University volunteers building the great SCinet.
Editor: Mikael Hansson