For the 15th time the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center and PIONIER Consortium participates in the world’s largest conference and exhibition of supercomputing technologies and new generation networks – Supercomputing SC19.
At this year’s exhibition PSNC in cooperation with ADVA company presents a special, industry’s first 1.2 Tb/s optical channel transmission. Built upon the ADVA FSP 3000 TeraFlex™ terminal, the demo showcases the power of adaptive technology to maximize efficiency in any network scenario.
The test infrastructure allows for communication at Tbit/s speed between Polish high-performance computer centers (Poznan, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Krakow and Gdansk). “New solutions presented by partners allow to achieve speeds of 400G, 800G and even 1.2T not in a laboratory conditions, but in an operationally working PIONIER network. The highest throughput is to be achieved by using 3x 400GbE in the 150GHz transmission channel” says Krzysztof Kurowski, Deputy Director of PSNC. In Denver, live monitoring of the devices’ status in the optical laboratory in Poznan, Poland will be possible.
This year, the main accents at the booth no. 1955 concentrate around the national network PIONIER Polish Optical Internet. This network is already a part of the global scientific infrastructure, connecting directly with traffic exchange points in Europe, through which it offers Polish scientists access to European e-infrastructures PRACE, LOFAR, EUDAT, EGI as well as a direct connection to CERN. Access to data and services of these European infrastructures is also provided by PIONIER to the Eastern Europe scientific networks focused around the EaP Connect project. Using the PIONIER optical network infrastructure, together with GEANT, a dedicated connection between the University of Warsaw and Singapore is being demonstrated, which opens new opportunities for Polish science to cooperate with research and development centers in East Asia.
In addition, the booth presents the services of the PIONIER network, including the new eduMEET service, which PSNC is developing together with Partners as a service for the entire environment of the pan-European network GEANT. Based on the modern capabilities of web browsers, the service enables effective functionality of multiuser videoconferencing simultaneously with 4K quality without the use of specialized software and dedicated infrastructure. “The solution based on the WebRTC protocol avoids many problems of existing solutions such as user accounts, special plugins or firewall locks” said Bartlomiej Idzikowski (PSNC). In Denver, it will be possible to test the service’s functionalities live, connecting to European terminals, as well as the GEANT booth, also present at SC19.
The booth also shows the latest application solutions for computer simulations of big challenges. “With our QCG tools and services we support new scenarios of multi-scale calculations and problems related to determining the level of uncertainty of simulation results” explains Tomasz Piontek (PSNC). An equally important aspect is the presentation of PSNC activities related to the European Open Science Cloud, “such as the provision of computing infrastructure for applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning, integration of national repositories of science with EOSC and support for cooperation of science with industry within the EOSC Digital Innovation Hub”, says Marcin Płóciennik (PSNC).
It is worth noting that this year more than a dozen European institutions and initiatives are marking their presence through the creation of a special zone “EuroZone”, situating the booths close to each other and presenting joint research projects; Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center with the PIONIER Consortium is also a part of this valuable idea.
