Supercomputing statistics for semester 2018A
As expected, the upgrade of the LaPalma Supercomputer (to LaPalma v3) has had
a big impact on the IAC Supercomputing statistics. The total amount of hours
consumed by IAC users in that Supercomputer in 2018A was 2,766,681.70, almost
8 times the time consumed in 2017A (which was the last complete semester for
LaPalma v2). This amount is slightly bigger than the sum of all consumed
hours in all IAC's supercomputing resources (LaPalma v2, TeideHPC, HTCondor,
etc.) in each of the last semesters. However, it is only the 41.3% of the
total execution time on LaPalma in 2018A, the other 59.7% (3,931,064.85
hours) being accounted for by RES users (the Spanish Supercomputing Network):
the total amount of hours computed on La Palma in 2018A was thus 6,697,746.55
hours.
While the number of CPU hours used up by HTCondor is more or less the same as
in the last semester, with 947,276.70 total hours, the biggest impact was
felt by TeideHPC, where the total amount of hours (1,445,672.17 hours)
decreased about 17% compared to 2017B. This was something we were
expecting, because even if both systems have similar characteristics
regarding to CPU, architecture, etc., the absence of limitations in the usage
of LaPalma and the faster data transfers make the latter much more attractive
to our local users.
Finally, the total amount of hours used by the new Severo Ochoa Supercomputer
was 462,608.36 (on the 192-core computing node only; GPU calculations are not
measured yet). Since the machine was added last fall, we
cannot compare it with past usage. Also, we began to measure the usage of the
various "burros" a few months ago, so we hope to add soon an estimation of the
consumed hours on those machines. In the meanwhile, you can check the
real-time load of some of the "burros" by pointing your browser to
http://carlota:81/burros/
Adding up all these numbers, the total amount of CPU hours used by IAC
researchers in semester 2018A was 5,622,238.93 hours, 4.3% more than in the
whole 2017.
New web-based observations management applications
As the amount of observations and astronomical data grows exponentially, the
use of suitable designed databases to manage all these data becomes
fundamental. Aware of this, during the last year we have been busy developing
several web-based applications to plan and manage observations for IAC
research projects. An example is the application developed for the
KESPRINT
Consortium, a multi-national collaboration for the discovery, confirmation
and characterization of planet candidates from the Kepler's K2 mission, which
enables the team to organize hundreds (planned to become thousands) of
exoplanet candidates and observations from K2 and TESS, as well as to produce
transits observability ephemerides based on several parameters, aimed to
optimize the scheduling of new observations. The
MuSCAT2 observations tool,
on the other hand, archives the targets and observations of TCS's instrument
and can produce observability reports helping plan the priority observations
every observing night, furthermore allowing real-time access to the data and
logs produced by MuSCAT2 .
These tools make it possible to manage large amounts of observations and to
plan new ones with collaborators and contributors all around the world. So,
if you deal with many and constantly growing data, maybe a database-based
application can help you not to drown in them.
Personnel movements
Antonio Dorta, SIE's supercomputing postdoc, will be leaving the IAC at the
end of August having secured a permanent position as high school teacher.
Let's congratulate him on this important accomplishment, and wish him all
the best in his new job! Those who want to say goodbye in exchange for a
chocolate or bonbon, please drop by our office on Wednesday 8th, Antonio's
last working day at the IAC before going on holiday.
Accessibility of websites
"Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of removing barriers that
prevent interaction with, or access to websites, by people with disabilities.
When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users have equal
access to information and functionality." The
Wikipedia page about
Web Accessibility starts with this paragraph, and then explain what Web
Accessibility means in practice. Just the introduction is well worth reading.
We all know directly or are familiar with people on a wheelchair, and the
many physical barriers they encounter in their daily life (for instance,
steps and curbs that block a person with mobility impairment from entering a
building or using a sidewalk). Well, similar barriers may find, for instance,
a blind person trying to read a website that does not comply with the most
basic accessibility criteria. Just a couple of examples to illustrate the
problem.
- A website is identified as being in english (by the
lang=en
tag in the head section). A blind person uses a screen reader which will use
the appropriate voice depending on the language set (in this case something
like a native english speaker). Let's say some page in the site contains text
in spanish, which however is not identified as such: it will be read with an
english accent, which may sound funny but certainly makes it difficult or
impossible to understand it.
- The website contains the typical image of a house, which clicked will
lead to the home page. Unfortunately, a screen reader cannot interpret image
and won't make sense of that little house icon. A simple alt tag added to the
image, such as
alt="Back to Home Page" or similar will be all it
needs to make it accessible.
So, whenever you receive a mail with an assessment on the accessibility of
you website, together with a list of issues and corrective actions, don't
think of it as one of those pointless requirements devised by some halfwit
bureaucrats whose only purpose is to waste our time, but as an opportunity to
make our websites accessible to as many people with diverse abilities as
possible.
Convert handwriting to LaTeX code
If it so happens that you wish to use a symbol in LaTeX and you don't know
what its LaTeX code is, or if you want to print an equation, but you don't
get the expected result, you can try one of the applications listed below,
which allow you to draw the symbol and/or equation on the screen using your
mouse, and automatically output the corresponding LaTeX code: