HPC Resource Allocation Report
Intersect conducted an HPC Resource Allocation round during September for the period 1 October 2010 to 31 March 2011. Resources were allocated in keeping with the following principles, to:
• encourage uptake by new users, students and smaller institutions; and
• assess and scale applications from the Go8 institutions (which typically dominate the requested allocations), against the available resources.
The NCI facility was over requested by 80 per cent, and over allocated by 17 per cent. The McLaren facility was over requested by 200 per cent and over allocated by 45 per cent. Results have been communicated to applicants, and can be viewed here. Intersect continues to monitor usage, while retaining flexibility to move allocations in consultation with users, and accommodate small start up grants between rounds.
Health News deployed
The Australian Health News Research Collaboration project has been deployed and is now live. The project provides convenient searching, streaming and downloading of videos via the Internet for approved researchers within and outside the University of Sydney.
Prof Simon Chapman, from the University’s School of Health says, “We are now able to share with other researchers over 23,000 video clips on health coverage in news and current affairs programs dating from 2005. This is a globally unique collection that will be invaluable to media researchers.
Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI) paper
The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research as part of their ongoing consultations, has recently circulated a Proposed Implementation Approach for the $50M Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI). The paper is pending publication, and copies can be made available to members on request.
NeCTAR Project Plan
The National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) has recently circulated an interim project plan and will consult across the sector from October. The plan contains detail on four key programs of activity.
These will provide for:
• the enhancement of eResearch Tools (eRT) valued by research communities;
• the provision of exemplars of problem-oriented Virtual Laboratories (VL);
• the development of a national Research Cloud (RC) to provide access to a set of virtualised research applications; and
• a suite of National Servers (NS) that will host core functions and applications.
The University of Melbourne is leading the NeCTAR project. The total Commonwealth funding for the project, provided as part of the Super Science initiative, is $47 million over four years.
See the interim NeCTAR site for more information: http://www.nectar.unimelb.edu.au/
eResearch Australasia Conference
The third eResearch Australasia conference will be held at RACV Royal Pines on Queensland’s Gold Coast from 8 – 12 November 2010. Early bird registration closes 11 October.
The conference is an opportunity for delegates to meet peers and gain an understanding of eResearch developments.
Recruiting
Intersect is seeking Java developers in both Sydney & the Gold Coast and Perl developers in Sydney.
For more information, see http://www.intersect.org.au/job-opportunities
Welcoming
Intersect welcomes the following new staff members. Business Analyst Jared Berghold comes from UNSW’s iCinema, Casual Tester Charles Shao is studying at UTS and Casual Tester Matthew Hillman is studying at the University of Sydney.
Kind regards
Leonie Hellmers