News
Friday, 22 September 2023
New CÉCI infrastructure status page
In order to optimize the communication of small downtimes or degraded service periods, we have setup a "status" page that will list the current known issues on the CÉCI infrastructure. Users are invited to refer to that page in case they face some issue on the infrastructure. This page will allow reducing the number of emails sent to the mailing list when the message is not relevant for all CÉCI users.
The link is in the top banner of the website, between "Documentation" and "Support".
Friday, 15 September 2023
Training sessions to start early October
The CISM and the CÉCI jointly offer, this year again, a complete training for super-computer users from a basic introduction to Linux to complex parallel computations with MPI. Registration is free but mandatory. More info on the training page.
Friday, 21 April 2023
CECI Users Meeting 2023: Registration is open
The 12th CÉCI Users Meeting (Groupe de contact FNRS "Calcul Intensif") will take place at UMons on Friday, April 21st afternoon
This year the keynote presentation “Large Eddy Simulations of turbomachinery flows: from academic configurations to a full aircraft engine simulation” will be given by Dr. Florent Duchaine, Senior Researcher from CERFACS, Toulouse, France.
You can find more details and the registration form here.
Thursday, 07 April 2022
First call for the Belgian fraction of LUMI compute time
The first call for the Belgian fraction of the LUMI compute time is now open. You have until April, 22 (11:59 pm) to submit a proposal for a regular (up to 10 million CPU core hours) or preparatory (up to 500 000 CPU core hours) access. All the details are available on the Belgian LUMI webpage.
Thursday, 03 February 2022
Workshop: managing workflow on HPC clusters
Thanks to a joint organization between CÉCI and VSC, we organize a PRACE workshop on managing workflow on HPC clusters that will take place on the 15 and 16 of February, 2022. During this workshop, you will discover tools to manage multiple tasks and jobs, how to automate packaging and deploying software, and some example from different research groups.
You can find more details and the registration form here.
Wednesday, 17 November 2021
Social media of the CÉCI
Two social media accounts are now available: @ceci_hpc on Twitter, and cecihpc on Linkedin. Feel free to subscribe to those accounts on your favorite social media, share the posts and mention the accounts when it is relevant.
Wednesday, 10 November 2021
Access to EuroHPC supercomputers is now open
The first call for proposals for the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) regular access mode is open. The call is continuously open with pre-defined cut-off dates (three per year) that will trigger the evaluation of the proposals submitted up to this date. The first cut-off date is Friday 3 December 2021, 10:00 AM CET.
You can find further details here.
Monday, 25 January 2021
LUMI Training - Practical course on the CUDA to HIP porting
CSC and the LUMI User Support Team organize their first training day that will focus on porting CUDA applications to HIP. This training aims to help the users to port their code to LUMI, the European pre-exascale supercomputer, that will achieve its high computing power thanks to a large number of nodes with AMD GPUs. This event will take place on February 26.
This session will provide an extensive dive into the Hipify tools, many examples and a hands-on session. If you’re developing your code with CUDA and wish to harness the computing power of LUMI in the future this training is a fantastic opportunity.
You can find further details and the registration form here.
Wednesday, 13 January 2021
NIC5 installed at ULiège
The new NIC5 HPC cluster is now available. It features 70 nodes with two 32 cores AMD EPYC Rome 7542 cpus at 2.9 GHz and 256 GB of RAM, 3 nodes with 1 TB of RAM, 520 TB of fast BeeGFS /scratch and a 100 Gbps Infiniband HDR interconnect (blocking factor 1,2:1), for a total of 4672 cores.
Friday, 23 August 2019
HERCULES2 installed at UNamur
The HPC cluster Hercules2 is now installed and available for use. It has a total of 1536 cores spread among 30 new nodes with AMD Epyc processors and 32 nodes with Sandy Bridge Intel Xeons which were kept from its predecesor Hercules.
With the new nodes going from 256 GB up to 2 TB of RAM, it is meant to take the place as the high memory CÉCI cluster. If you have large memory jobs to run, try it!
Tuesday, 23 April 2019
DRAGON2 installed at UMons
A new CÉCI cluster Dragon2 is now installed and operational at UMons. This is the second CÉCI cluster to be deployed as part of the renewal process which started last year.
It has a total of 592 cores of the latest generation SkyLakes Intel Xeon processors and there are two special nodes having each 2 high-end NVidia Tesla V100 GPUs.
Tuesday, 02 April 2019
11th CÉCI Scientific Meeting
The next CÉCI scientific day will take place on April 25th at ULB.
Program details here.
Monday, 04 June 2018
LEMAITRE3 installed at UCL
Lemaitre3 is now operational and replaces Lemaitre2, which will be decommissioned this Summer. It has 80 nodes (SkyLake 2.3 GHz, 24CPUs, 96GB RAM) interconnected with the Intel OmniPath Architecture and more than half a petabyte of scratch space.
Thursday, 03 May 2018
Survey on Big Data and Machine Learning needs
We are conducting a survey about current and future High Performance Data Analysis (HPDA) works & needs, covering BigData, DeepLearning, MachineLearning, AI & co. Research groups already active in those fields are our primary center of interest. However, those moving or intending to move into those fields are welcome to fill the survey too. Our objective is to identify concrete hardware and software requirements for the future CECI Vega2 cluster which will be oriented towards HTC (High Throughput Computing) and HPDA.
You are therefore cordially invited to follow this link and fill the survey.
Monday, 26 March 2018
10th CÉCI Scientific Meeting
The next CÉCI scientific day will take place on May 4th in Namur.
Details and registration here.
Friday, 16 March 2018
PRACE Call for Proposal
PRACE has issued the 17th call for Proposals. Deadline: 2nd May 2018, 10:00 CET; Stake: Single-year and Multi-year proposals starting 2nd October 2018; Resources: Joliot-Curie, Hazel Hen, JUWELS, Marconi, MareNostrum IV, Piz Daint and SuperMUC.
Let us know if you apply and participate!
Monday, 05 February 2018
Presentation by a CÉCI sysadmin at the FOSDEM'18 conference
UCL sysadmin Damien François gave a presentation at the latest FOSDEM'18 conference talking about the Open Source software stack powering UCL clusters.
A recording of the presentation is now available to see here.
Wednesday, 31 January 2018
PRACE Summer of HPC 2018
Applications are open to participate in the PRACE Summer of HPC Programme 2018. PRACE Summer of HPC is a PRACE outreach and training programme that offers summer placements at top HPC centres across Europe to late-stage undergraduates and early-stage postgraduate students. Up to twenty top applicants from across Europe will be selected to participate. The programme will run from 2 July to 31 August 2018.
Let us know if you apply and participate!
Saturday, 23 September 2017
A CECI user pictured in the ULiège news!
The ULiège website published a story (in French) about the work of Denis Baurain and his collaborators on the Tier-1 cluster Zenobe that lead to a publication in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Tuesday, 01 August 2017
Ariel Lozano is the new CÉCI logisticien
We are happy to announce the hire of a new CECI logisticien: Ariel Lozano. Welcome Ariel!
Sunday, 02 April 2017
20 000 000 core-hours on a PRACE cluster allocated to two CÉCI users
UCL professors Gian-Marco Rignanese and Jean-Christophe Charlier have been granted 20 millions core-hours on Marconi KNL (CINECA, Italy). Congratulation to them!
Tuesday, 21 March 2017
Register for the Ninth CÉCI Scientific Meeting!
The ninth CÉCI scientific meeting day is organised in Louvain-la-Neuve on April 21st. More information and registration: see here.
Friday, 03 March 2017
The CÉCI common filesystem is ready
The CÉCI common filesystem is fully available on the 6 CÉCI clusters.
For example, the partition /CECI/home/ is directly accessible from all the login and compute nodes on all the clusters. Make sure to try it out! More information here.
Wednesday, 14 September 2016
HPC event 2016: Registration is open
The October 10th 2016 HPC event organized by CENAERO, is open for registration. The presence of the Vice-President of the Government of Wallonia, Jean-Claude Marcourt, is confirmed. Take a look at the event program(in french). Attendance is free of charge, but registration is required
Tuesday, 02 August 2016
We tested for you: Belnet Filesender
Belnet offers a file transfer service that you can use to send large files over the internet to colleagues or collaborators. To use it, simply go to https://filesender.belnet.be/, choose your university, and enter your university identifier and password (the one that you typically use to access your emails or your university's intranet.) Then you simply have to choose the file, enter the recipient's email address, and your correspondent will recieve a link to your file that she can download. More information here.
Wednesday, 06 July 2016
HPC event. Save the date !
A HPC event is being prepared for October 10th 2016. The event is organized by CENAERO, the operator of Tier-1 supercomputer in Wallonia. The presence of the Vice-President of the Government of Wallonia, Jean-Claude Marcourt, is announced. More details on the content and the schedule will be communicated further. See more information (in French)
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Visit of the Minister of Budget
The new data center dedicated to scientifc computing built in Louvain-la-Neuve has welcomed a visit of the European Investment Bank on June 14th. The group was led by the Minister of Budget of the Federation Wallonie-Bruxelles André Flahaut. He was accompanied by a representative of the F.R.S.-FNRS and a representative of the Minister of Higher Education. See more information here.
Tuesday, 24 May 2016
CÉCI sysadmins at Belnet event
Belnet is announcing their next Networking Conference to be held on Oct 25th in Brussels on their Twitter account using a picture from last year featuring CÉCI system administrators in the front row. See the tweet here.
Friday, 22 April 2016
Eighth CÉCI Scientific Meeting
The eighth CÉCI scientific meeting day was organised in Liège on April 22nd. Nine talks were scheduled to present HPC-related aspects of scientific research. See the program here.
Sunday, 29 November 2015
Upcoming conference "e-Infrastructures in Belgium"
The CÉCI co-organizes, in collaboration with Belspo, EWI, SPW, Belnet, and VSC, a conference dedicated to e-infrastructure (network, computing, storage) for scientific research on Monday 14th in Brussels. Registration is free but mandatory. More details here.
Thursday, 01 October 2015
PRACE Call for Proposal
PRACE has issued the 12th call for Proposals: ( deadline: 11th November 2015, 12:00 (noon) CET; stake: 1 year allocation starting: 14th March 2016 ; resources:Fermi and MareNostrum
Let us know if you respond and participate!
Friday, 14 August 2015
PRACE Call for Proposal
PRACE has issued a Call for Proposals for HPC Compute Resources from DECI-13 (Tier-1): deadline: 21th Sep 2015, 17:00 CEST ; stake: 1 year allocation starting: 18 Jan, 2016 ; resources: all Tier-1 machines.
Let us know if you respond and participate!
Sunday, 12 July 2015
1000th user account created!
On July 12th, the 1000th account was created. This is an important milestone for the CÉCI project! See more details here.
Thursday, 02 April 2015
Seventh CÉCI Scientific Meeting
The seventh CÉCI scientific meeting day is organised in Mons on April 24th. Eight talks are scheduled to present HPC-related aspects of scientific research. See the program here.
Friday, 20 March 2015
Juan Cabrera is the new CÉCI logisticien
The F.N.R.S. has accepted the hire of Juan Cabrera as Logisticien for the CÉCI. Welcome Juan!
Monday, 09 February 2015
PRACE Call for Proposal
PRACE has issued the 11th call for Proposals: ( deadline: 18th March 2015, 13:30 CET ; stake: 1 year allocation starting: 1st Sept, 2015 ; resources:Fermi and MareNostrum)
Let us know if you respond and participate!
Thursday, 15 January 2015
NIC4 upgraded at ULg
NIC4, the CÉCI cluster hosted at ULg, has been upgraded with 8 additional nodes, all with the same features as the previously existing ones. Slurm has furthermore been updated to version 14.03, now featuring among others job arrays.
Friday, 12 December 2014
Zenobe, the Walloon Tier-1 supercomputer is now available to all the CÉCI users
Zenobe features 342 compute nodes with two 12-cores Intel E5-2697 v2 processors at 2.7 GHz and 64 GB of RAM and 274 compute nodes with two 6-cores Intel X5675 processors at 3GHz and mainly 24 GB of RAM, interconnected with a fast non-blocking QDR Infiniband network. Zenobe is furthermore equiped with a fast 350 TB GPFS parallel filesystem.
See the FAQ for information on how to get access to Zenobe.
Monday, 03 March 2014
22,260,000 core-hours on PRACE Tier-0 clusters allocated to CÉCI users. Be the next one!
Jean-Christophe Charlier and Nicolas Leconte (UCL), and Samir Sid and Vincent Terrapon (ULg) have been allocated time on Tier-0 clusters, respectively in the context of the 8th Regular Call and for a preparatory access. Congratulation to them.
As the 9th Call for Proposal is now open, do not hesitate to apply.
Thursday, 27 February 2014
NIC4 installed at ULg
The sixth CECI cluster, NIC4 has entered production. It is installed at ULg. NIC4 features 120 compute nodes with two 8-cores Intel E5-2650 processors at 2.0 GHz and 64 GB of RAM (4 GB/core), interconnected with a QDR Infiniband network (2:1 blocking factor), and having exclusive access to a fast 144 TB FHGFS parallel filesystem. From today, you can access it with your CÉCI credentials.
Press Coverage
Tuesday, 08 May 2018
Dragon1 cluster featured in a Belnet article
The Dragon1 CÉCI cluster is highlighted in an interview from Belnet to Chantal Poiret, professor in Information and Communication Technology at the University of Mons.
Follow this link to read the complete note.
Tuesday, 21 January 2014
Media coverage of the Tier1 inauguration
The CÉCI has often been referred to in the press coverage of the inauguration of the Tier-1 Supercalculateur at Cenaero on Monday, January the 20th.
The following news bulletins excerpts feature members of the CÉCI being interviewed. They all date Jan 20th.
Some articles:
- RTBF Un supercalculateur inauguré à Gosselies
- LaLibre La Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles a son supercalculateur
- L'Avenir Mise en exploitation du supercalculateur de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles
- L'Avenir Un calculateur particulièrement super
- RTL Le Supercalculateur Tier 1: l'ordinateur wallon est le plus puissant de Belgique
- Le Soir Un supercalculateur unique en Belgique
- La DH Supercalculateur est en marche !
- La Nouvelle Gazette Mise en exploitation officielle du supercalculateur de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles à Charleroi
Thursday, 10 October 2013
CanalC news topic about UNamur and Hercules
Canal C's news bulletin from October 9 features UNamur's cluster Hercules.
See the video here.
Friday, 20 September 2013
La Libre article mentioning Hercules
La Libre has published an article entitled 'Les Belges bousculent l'icône Einstein' where the Hercules cluster is mentioned.
See the article here.
Sunday, 01 September 2013
InsideHPC article about Vega
InsideHPC and Scientific Computing World have released an article about Vega, the new CÉCI cluster installed at ULB. The article also mentions other CÉCI clusters.
Saturday, 22 June 2013
La Libre article mentioning the CÉCI
La Libre has published an article about supercomputers, featuring UNamur CÉCI members.
See the article here.
Monday, 22 April 2013
La Libre article about UNamur's cluster inauguration.
La Libre has a short article about the latest CÉCI scientific day, held in Namur on April 19th, 2013, where the new CÉCI cluster was inaugurated.
See the article here.
Tuesday, 01 May 2012
Article about CÉCI and CISM in 'La Quinzaine'
La Quinzaine, the internal magazine of UCLouvain, publishes an article about the CISM and the CÉCI in its May issue.
See the article here.
Friday, 10 February 2012
Second Datanews article about CÉCI this year
The latest issue of Datanews offers a one-page article about the CÉCI. Based on an interview with Thomas Keutgen, manager at the supercomputing centre of UCL, the article details the CÉCI initiative, organization and roadmap. The article highlights the fact that, by 2013, the CÉCI clusters should represent a total of 6000 to 7000 compute cores.
See the article here.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Datanews article about CÉCI
Datanews publishes an article about Lemaitre2, the new CÉCI cluster installed at UCL. The article, titled "L'UCL installe 14 Tflops", describes the new cluster and compares its features to the olders clusters from UCL. The article also brievely presents the CÉCI and its organisation.
See the article here.
Monday, 20 December 2010
Roundup for the year 2010
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22 November 2010 : Article in "La Libre Belgique" about the (lack of) funding of the F.R.S.-FNRS, citing the CÉCI as an example.
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17 November 2010 : Two mentions of the CÉCI agreement signature on the FNRS news.
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16 November 2010 : TV report by Canal Zoom about the signature of the CÉCI consoriumt agreement.
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12 November 2010 : Article in "Le Vif" about the creation of the CÉCI consortium.