So long Jorge, and thanks for all the websites
As you probably already know, Jorge's contract ends the last day of November.
Since he still had a few vacation days to take advantage of, he has already
left for good. As we write this, we do not know yet when the web-officer
position in the SIE will be filled again. In the meantime the Web services we
can provide will be of course limited. We will focus on keeping existing
applications running and solve related problems and bugs that may show up,
but in general further or new developments will necessarily freeze or be
postponed until more favourable times.
Acknowledgments in papers for usage of IAC
Supercomputing facilities: LaPalma, Teide-HPC, HTCondor
We would like to remind you all that our Supercomputing resources must be
properly acknowledged in all papers that made use of them, the same way you
acknowledge use of the ORM and OT telescopes. We have the impression that
such acknowledgements are still somewhat erratic, especially for HTCondor.
The sentences to be included in the acknowledgements section in the paper
are:
LaPalma Supercomputer:
"The author thankfully acknowledges the technical expertise and assistance
provided by the Spanish Supercomputing Network (Red Española de
Supercomputación), as well as the computer resources used: the LaPalma
Supercomputer, located at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias."
Teide-HPC: "The author(s) wish
to acknowledge the contribution of Teide High-Performance Computing
facilities to the results of this research. TeideHPC facilities are provided
by the Instituto Tecnológico y de Energías Renovables (ITER, SA).
URL:
http://teidehpc.iter.es"
HTCondor (there is no standard format,
we suggest the following): "This paper made use of the IAC Supercomputing
facility HTCondor (
https://research.cs.wisc.edu/htcondor/)"
New desktop PCs soon to come
Last February we submitted a proposal to the MICINN applying for FEDER (the
Spanish acronym for "European Regional Development Fund") money to expand our
HTCondor network with the acquisition of a number of latest-model desktop
PCs. A little unexpectedly, the proposal was approved, so that we have now
about 50 thousand Euro (80% covered by FEDER, 20% by IAC's own money) to buy
what we estimate to be about 60-70 desktop PCs. The exact model (and price)
depends on what "Patrimonio" has available in its catalog, but in principle
it should have 4 or 8 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM and 1 TB HD. These new PCs will
replace those old ones whose maintenance has already expired and which (some
of them) have started to show some old age ailments. We would like to thank
all those users who sent us short descriptions of how they use HTCondor and
why it's important for their research work: some of them were included in the
proposal as illustrative examples and certainly made a major contribution to
its success.
And speaking of HTCondor (which celebrates 10 years since its first
installation here at the IAC), we would like to remind you that, if you were
unable to attend the HTCondor Workshop held last month, you still can access
both the
Presentation
and the
Exercises (Google slides).
Also, for those users not familiar with HTCondor but interested in using it,
our SIEpedia article
Introduction
to HTCondor is an excellent starting point
ULL student practice at SIE: "Benchmarking the
computing resources at IAC."
As part of the "Práctica Externa" program carried out by the IAC and
the ULL, Juan Carlos Trelles Arjona, a fourth-year student in the Department
of Physics, has joined the IAC to carry out a one-month long project whose
objective is to benchmark the computing resource available at the IAC (from
humble desktop PCs to Supercomputers, and possibly including laptops). He
will first use a number of standard industry benchmark codes, compiled with
the different compilers installed at the IAC (GNU, Intel, PGI), and then run
some specific tests for those astronomical software packages commonly used at
the IAC (IRAF, IDL, Python, etc.). Users often wonder how faster the
brand-new PC assigned to their officemates is compared to their older one, or
how much they gain in speed by running their code on the LaPalma
Supercomputer or on Teide-HPC, or if their small laptop is good enough for
number-crunching. We hope this study will be able to provide a quantitative
answer to these questions. The results will be published in the next issue of
our Newsletter.
CATeval: A Web-based application to manage proposals
evaluation and observing time allocations
A couple of weeks ago the Time Allocation Commission (CAT from its Spanish
acronym) met to rate the proposals andallocate observing time among the
successful ones. During the last few years the work of the CAT has been made
progressively more comfortable and efficient by a Web-based application
called CATeval, created here at the IAC. It was first implemented by A. B.
Griñón Marín, J. Acosta and A. de Vicente, and subsequently maintained and
further developed by yours truly, in particular by A. Dorta. One of the
latest improvements was the inclusion in the application of the algorithms
used to allocate observing time (hours or night) taking into account such
constrains as required Moon phase and preferred or impossible observing
dates. This addition, complemented by useful statistics, allows the CAT to
optimally allocate the available observing time among the best rated
proposals, and guarantee a good balance between the time allocated to each of
its three panels (Galaxies & Cosmology, Galaxies & Stars and Stars &
Planets). The development of CATeval does not stop here. The next step, to be
completed before the next meeting, is to streamline significantly the
intercommunication process between CATeval and
http://cat.iac.es, the Web service that
receives the proposals and then displays the results to the applicants.
Astrophysics Source Code Library
Perhaps many of you do not know yet the
Astrophysics Source Code Library, a "free online
registry for source codes of interest to astronomers and astrophysicists and
which lists codes that have been used in research that has appeared in, or
been submitted to, peer-reviewed publications." Also, "The ASCL is indexed by
the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) and is citable by using the
unique ascl ID assigned to each code." As of now there are a little less than
one thousand entries in the ASCL, which can be browsed by title, date, or be
full searched.