2024-12-12 –, Plenary Room 'Progress'
Energy efficiency in computing becomes more and more important as climate change impacts intensify, energy costs increase, and efforts to reach the Sustainable Development Goals to tackle environmental, social and economic issues gain momentum. This is especially true for large-scale computing for research, including cloud computing, which underpin advancements and breakthroughs in many scientific domains. Achieving significant improvements in energy efficiency for such resource-intensive computing tasks, especially artificial intelligence methods including machine learning, deep learning and the new generation of large language models, is a complex challenge that requires a coordinated effort across hardware and software domains, as well as a large group of actors including infrastructure providers, system administrators, software developers, and researchers. Despite the rapid pace of technological development, many existing tools and platforms still lack essential features, such as detailed energy consumption metrics and granular task-level monitoring capabilities. Optimization of research computing workflows considering energy efficiency is also mostly overlooked. This panel discussion seeks to unite a diverse array of experts from the Netherlands, and potentially from the international community, to shed light on the current practices and challenges of energy-efficient computing, with a special focus on research. We aim to explore how energy efficiency is currently addressed within advanced computing, identify critical gaps, and discuss actionable steps to enhance collaboration and drive forward more energy-efficient practices. By fostering this exchange of ideas and experiences of different actors, we hope to contribute to the development of computing infrastructures and workflows that are not only powerful but also environmentally sustainable.
Panelists:
- Prof. Dr. Rob van Nieuwpoort (Leiden University)
- Gilles Tourpe (Amazon Web Services)
- Gijs van den Oord (Netherlands eScience Centre)
- Sagar Dolas (SURF)
- Adhitya Adhitya Bhawiyuga (University of Twente)
Dr. Serkan Girgin has established and is currently leading the activities of the Center of Expertise in Big Geodata (CRIB) at Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, which is an overarching facility collecting, developing, and sharing operational know-how on the geospatial big data technologies. He performs research on big data, cloud computing, and research data management technologies, and provides advice and consultancy on adoption of these technologies for education, research, and capacity development activities. He is also an expert on the design and development of geocomputing platforms, GIS and RS applications, environmental information systems, and large-scale web applications. He has designed and developed ITC's Geospatial Computing Platform, and European Commission's Natech Database (eNatech) and Rapid Natech Risk Assessment and Mapping System (RAPID-N). He has more than two decades of research and consultancy experience in academic, private, and scientific organizations. He is an eScience Center Fellow and 2022 SURF Research Support Champion in the Netherlands.
Sagar Dolas is a member of the Innovation Labs at SURF, where he leads and manages various programs and initiatives focused on Future Infrastructure and Applications, Advanced Computing, and Networking. In recent years, he has concentrated on energy as a design principle for the future of computing. He has led projects to integrate energy management tools with the Dutch supercomputer Snellius. Sagar has a background in High-Performance Computing (HPC), computational engineering, and applied mathematics, having completed his graduate-level studies at TU Delft and FAU Erlangen before joining SURF.
Adhitya is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, specializing in Geo-information Processing. His research, in collaboration with The Center of Expertise in Big Geodata Science (CRIB), focuses on energy-efficiency on earth observation big data processing within cloud computing environmet. He holds an M.Sc. in Logistics Information Technology from Pusan National University, Korea (2013) with the focus on vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communication. For the past 10 years, Adhitya has worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Brawijaya, Indonesia. His experience includes collaborating on national and international projects such as the Indonesia Matching Fund Project, Erasmus+ Micro-Credential, and NICT ASEAN IVO Project. Beyond his primary research, Adhitya has developed a keen interest in the intersection of cloud computing service orchestration and scientific big data processing, particularly in the geospatial domain.
Gijs van den Oord, born in Leuven (Belgium) in 1981, studied theoretical physics and mathematics at Utrecht University. After his master thesis in string theory, he did a PhD in particle physics at the Radboud University and Nikhef, during which he developed Monte Carlo simulations for weak boson scattering at the Large Hadron Collider. Subsequently, Gijs worked as a consultant in scientific software development for Alten Netherlands, primarily focusing on couplings for environmental and hydrodynamical models at Deltares. Gijs joined the Netherlands eScience Center in 2016 and has mainly been involved in research projects in weather & climate, fluid dynamics and high-energy physics using his expertise in high-performance computing, GPU acceleration and machine learning. On 1 March 2024, Gijs became the Section Head for the Natural Sciences & Engineering team.
Rob van Nieuwpoort is full professor “Efficient Computing and eScience” at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) at Leiden university, The Netherlands. His research involves ways in which large-scale computing power can be used more efficiently in achieving scientific breakthroughs in various scientific fields. He develops new programming models that make the use of large-scale systems (so-called exascale computers) simpler and more efficient. In addition, energy efficiency plays a crucial part. For large-scale scientific experiments such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, energy use is a limiting factor and a major expense. In these cases, software that uses energy more efficiently will have the immediate effect of increasing the sensitivity of the instruments. His second research interest is eScience. The field of eScience promotes the use of digital technology in research. eScience brings together IT technology, data science, computational science, e-infrastructure and data- and computation-intensive research across all disciplines, from physics to the humanities. He works on bridging fundamental computer science research and its application in exciting scientific disciplines.
Amazon
Gilles Tourpe is a technology leader with over two decades of experience in the field of High-Performance Computing (HPC). His journey began with his first work experience on a trading floor, which instilled in him a commitment to delivering practical and usable solutions for customers and partners. Prior to joining Amazon Web Services (AWS) in September 2019, Tourpe held various positions in technology companies, where he honed his expertise in HPC/HTC. At AWS, he covers multiple verticals, including Oil & Gas, Research, Automotive, Manufacturing, Financial Services, and Life Sciences, leveraging his deep understanding of the industry's needs. Gilles's passion for collaboration and partnership has been a driving force throughout his career. He represents AWS in the ETP4HPC organization (European Technology Platform for High Performance Computing), fostering cooperation within the HPC ecosystem. Additionally, he played a pivotal role in initiating the TERATEC Hackathon, a platform for developing HPC engineers. Recognizing the value of academic collaborations, Gilles has developed partnership agreements with the University of Luxembourg, enabling the Uni researchers to access latest AWS Graviton technology.