Transfer at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre - Bringing Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing to Industry

Lintermann, Andreas

Poster (Other)

FZJ-2023-02163

Transfer at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre - Bringing Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing to Industry

Lintermann, A. (Corresponding author)FZJ*

2023

Helmholtz Strategic Advisory Board Meeting, SAB, Jülich, Germany, 18 May 2023 - 19 May 2023

Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/34526

Abstract: The Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) provides immense computing power to the national and international research community. It performs cutting-edge research in, e.g., High-Performance Computing (HPC), operating systems, federated systems and data, Quantum computing, and computational science. The latter is mainly driven by the Simulation and Data Labs (SDLs), support structures which bridge the gap between various domains and the infrastructure. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is penetrating most of the scientific domains and is hence a topic indispensable to research. The advancement of AI technologies in combination with the massive growth of data demand scalable algorithms and systems to efficiently train AI models. Therefore, intertwined AI and HPC development is becoming more and more a core component of the SDLs. JSC is involved in major lighthouse projects such as in the Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network (LIAON), West-AI, and in the establishment of a National Competence Center for AI, HPC, and big data analytics in the EuroCC 2 project. The most prominent AI project, which is coordinated by JSC, is the European Center of Excellence in Exascale Computing RAISE.JSC is using this momentum and aims at matching the gathered expertise in AI and HPC to use cases from regional and supra-regional industry. The Industry Relation Team (IRT) at JSC, established in 2015, represents the first contact point to commercial partners. It is the matchmaking component between external business demands and JSC’s expertise in HPC hardware and software development. The IRT provides consulting services, is responsible for selling compute cycles on JSC’s HPC and Quantum infrastructure, and channels domain-specific expertise to customers. The projects managed by the IRT cover a wide range of industrial sectors, reaching from the automobile industry over engineering service providers to healthcare companies. These activities integrate smoothly into the EuroCC 2 project, which furthermore pushes knowledge transfer to the public and scientific sectors.All these transfer activities are continuously converging into a service landscape to be regionally offered to companies. This will be realized in the context of the Agency for Cognitive Computing (ACC), a structural change project that is currently brought on its way. The ACC will provide services on various levels to stakeholders in the Rhenish region. Its competence network together with the expertise, infrastructure, and development platforms of the Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) and its partners will facilitate the adoption of cutting-edge research methods in AI, Quantum, and HPC by local companies. This offer will be complemented by a massive enhancement of the German-wide most successful dual degree program in Mathematical-Technical Software Development, which is jointly offered by FZJ and the Aachen University of Applied Sciences – Campus Jülich. This program already has a long tradition and the students work towards their B.Sc. degree and a qualification from the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. In collaboration with local industrial partner, the next-generation of data scientists educated in cutting-edge research topics and capable of using FZJ’s infrastructure are grown. This way, an effective transfer of knowledge to application-relevant problem setups in regional industry is facilitated.

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