New report details the future computing and data handling needs of Finnish top research

When seeking solutions to the humankind's major challenges, scientific computing is in key position. CSC explored what sort of scientific computing capabilities and services are required from the researchers' point of view so that Finland can excel in international competition in 2017–2021.

Survey of researcher's needs

The use of computing and data-driven approaches in research is increasing rapidly. Traditional experimental research is being supplemented with, and partly replaced by, computer simulations. Today also the humanities and social sciences are introducing computational methods as a consequence of digitalization and accelerating growth in data volumes.

The new report broadly describes the future prospects as well as computing and data handling needs of Finnish scientific community in coming years. Some of the research focus areas in Finland are highlighted by the following examples:

  • Better tools for diagnosis, and treatment of diseases (e.g. cancer)
  • Novel materials, such as artificial hips that resemble natural bones
  • Clean and efficient energy production by modeling nuclear fusion and e.g. efficient solar cells
  • Understanding climate change through improving the coupled climate models and modeling sea-level change due to glacier ice loss
  • Improving human worldview by studying e.g. galaxy formation and nature of dark energy
  • Emerging fields such as machine learning and its applications in areas such as natural language processing

– These examples are generated together in dialogue with researchers from different scientific fields. During the fall, we organized six seminars and discussion forums in universities all over Finland. The findings were complemented with results form an online survey which was sent to over 400 researchers working in Finnish universities or research institutes, says Senior Application Specialist Sebastian von Alfthan from CSC.

Recommendations for the future computing infrastructure 2017–2019

Based on researcher's needs, experts have analyzed the requirements placed on the future infrastructure, and recommendations are drawn up to meet these needs:

  • Ability to efficiently run computational jobs ranging from single-core and single-node to massively parallel jobs employing tens of thousands of CPU cores simultaneously. To be in line with CSC's previous procurements since 2000, and to maintain the relative competitiveness level globally, the new infrastructure should be able to produce total computational capability of around 7 Pflops in 2017, with an additional upgrade in 2019.
  • The requirements of data-intensive computing need to be addressed. This in practice entails larger amount of main memory, and larger and more versatile storage solutions in relation to current systems, as well as increased support for cloud environments.
  • To meet these requirements funding for the infrastructure investments should be 30‐35 million euros in 2017‐2019.

Traditionally the level of computational science in Finland has been on a high level, supported by regular investment to maintain an internationally competitive infrastructure.

– Without a regular investment there is a risk that the international competitiveness of research in Finland will decrease. This would not only harm the scientific community, but would also negatively impact the Finnish society and economy, as the ideas and achievements of science are needed also by companies to innovate and to utilize new technologies, says Pekka Lehtovuori, Director, Services for Research, at CSC

Further information

Pekka Lehtovuori
Director, Services for Research
CSC – IT Center for Science
pekka.lehtovuori@csc.fi
tel. +358 (0)50 3819 723

Report "The Scientific Case and User Requirements for High-Performance and Data-Intensive Computing in Finland 2017-2021": www.csc.fi/-/sciencecase2017-2021

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