Announcement

Results of the GRID'2023 conference

On 3-7 July, the 10th anniversary International conference “Distributed Computing and Grid Technologies in Science and Education” (GRID'2023) was held at the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies in a mixed format.

The conference traditionally attracted a large community of Russian and foreign experts ready to discuss emerging challenges and prospects related to the use and development of distributed grid technologies, heterogeneous and cloud computing in different fields of science, education, industry and business. This year the list of conference topics was complemented with computing for megascience projects, machine and deep learning, Big Data analytics and quantum computing.
More than 280 scientists (210 in person, over 70 remotely) from research centres of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Serbia, Switzerland and Uzbekistan took part in the conference. Russia was represented by participants from 40 universities and research centres.

JINR Director G.V. Trubnikov opened the conference with a report on JINR’s scientific directions and flagship projects. MLIT Scientific Leader V.V. Korenkov spoke about the status of the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex and perspectives for its development.

The talk by A.K. Fedorov, Skolkovo Quantum IT Group Leader, on the control of quantum many-body systems evoked great interest among the audience.

V.V. Voevodin (Director of the MSU Research Computing Centre, Director of the MSU Branch in Sarov) delivered a plenary report on supercomputing co-design that enables to simultaneously take into account the architectural features of supercomputer systems, the properties of the software and hardware environment, parallel programming technologies, the structure of algorithms and the specifics of the initial formulations for the effective solution of large computationally challenging tasks. D.V. Podgainy (Head of the Sector of Heterogeneous Computing and Quantum Informatics, MLIT JINR) continued the topic of supercomputer technologies with a talk on the recent modernization of the “Govorun” supercomputer (MLIT JINR). Over the past year, the “Govorun” supercomputer has been modernized in terms of CPU, GPU and storage system standards, which opens up new opportunities in solving present-day tasks, especially those related to deep machine learning. A.A. Moskovsky (General Director of the CJSC “RSC Technologies”, RSC Group) spoke about an integrated approach to building high-performance solutions based on the experience of RSC, the leading developer and integrator of supercomputer technologies in Russia and the CIS.

At the conference there were plenary talks on the concept of computing for the experiments of the NICA megascience project, namely, MPD (S. Hnatic, Lead Researcher, MLIT JINR), BM@N (K.V. Gertsenberger, Head of the Mathematical and Software Group, VBLHEP JINR), SPD (A.S. Zhemchugov, Deputy Head of the Scientific and Experimental Department of Colliding Beams, DLNP JINR). D.V. Naumov (Deputy Director for Scientific Work, DLNP JINR) spoke in detail about JINR’s neutrino programme (Baikal-GVD, JUNO, NOvA, etc.). The current state of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) and the challenges that await the WLCG and the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in terms of processing and storing ever-increasing data streams were presented by M. Litmaath (WLCG Operations Coordination Co-chair, CERN). T.A. Strizh (Deputy Director for Scientific Work, MLIT JINR) gave an overview of the development of the Tier1 centre at MLIT JINR for the CMS experiment from a prototype to a centre that has the world’s leading position in event processing within the CMS experiment. At present, JINR’s Tier1 is also used for processing data from the NICA experiments. V.V. Velikhov (Deputy Director for Information Technologies and Systems, NRC “Kurchatov Institute”) devoted his report to the status of the computing infrastructure of the NRC “Kurchatov Institute”. V.V. Kotliar (Head of the Laboratory of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Engineering, NRC “Kurchatov Institute” – IHEP) discussed the evolution of the WLCG Tier2 computing centre at the NRC “Kurchatov Institute” – IHEP from 2003 to 2023, and A.K. Kiryanov (Head of the Department of Information and Computing Resources and Technologies, NRC “Kurchatov Institute” – PNPI) enlarged upon the monitoring system of the PIK data centre, the main task of which is data storage and processing within experiments at the PIK nuclear reactor.

E.M. Lavrischeva (Chief Researcher, ISP RAS) presented a description of the resource assembly apparatus using fundamental and general types of data and functions for converting transmitted non-equivalent, unstructured data (including Big Data) in the Internet environment. Different molecular devices based on DNA, which enable the solution of bioinformatics tasks, were considered by V.D. Lakhno (Scientific Leader, IMPB RAS, Pushchino). The talk by A.V. Bogdanov (Professor, Department of Fundamental Informatics and Distributed Systems, SPbU) discussed in detail solutions of partial differential equations with particular emphasis on a representation at the so-called “intermediate point”. This kind of representation opens the way for parallel algorithms. Two options for implementing a computational experiment, namely, with full parallelization and achieving the independence of modeling processes with interactive and graphical visualization, were presented in the report by A.B. Degtyarev (Professor, Head of the Department of Computer Modelling and Multiprocessor Systems, SPbU).

Plenary talks on the rapidly developing technologies and methods of machine learning were also delivered at the conference. A.E. Shevel (Head of the Department of Computing Systems, Sector of High Energy Physics, NRC “Kurchatov Institute” – PNPI) spoke about the growing role of artificial neural networks in data processing for high-energy physics. D.E. Namiot (Senior Researcher, Laboratory of Open Information Technologies, MSU) reviewed approaches to the certification of machine learning models. A.V. Stadnik (Senior Data Analyst, Computer Vision Group of the Laboratory of AI and Neural Networks, Branch No. 11, OCRV Sirius) devoted his report to the investigation of the task of detecting objects of various sizes using a neural network model. The results obtained can be applied in different areas, such as automatic driving, vehicle monitoring, etc. D.K. Karachev (Lead Data Analyst, Computer Vision Group of the Laboratory of AI and Neural Networks, Branch No. 11, OCRV Sirius) described an image mixing method based on the interpolation of latent space features in the process of generating diffusion models, which can be used to study the internal peculiarities of algorithms when generating images. E.P. Stepanov (Junior Researcher, Department of Computer Systems Automation, MSU) dwelled upon traffic routing in NPC (Network Parameter Control) networks.

A.N. Bugay (Director of LRB JINR) spoke about high-performance computing and modeling in radiation biology; he underlined that modeling in biology was always a multi-level hierarchical system that entailed the involvement of many methods and large computational resources. M. Сosiс (Associate Professor, Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Serbia) presented the investigation of the quantum dynamics of a collimated electron beam passing through planar channels of a silicon crystal. This method is used in scintigraphy and radiation therapy.

S.V. Ulyanov (Chief Researcher, MLIT JINR) discussed quantum IT engineering in the tasks of the intellectual control of physical systems.

N.A. Kutovskiy (Senior Researcher, MLIT JINR) presented the status of the JINR cloud infrastructure and the distributed information and computing platform that integrates the cloud resources of the JINR Member States’ organizations. O.V. Sukhoroslov (Senior Researcher, Centre for Grid Technologies and Distributed Computing, IITP RAS) enlarged upon simulation modeling using the example of a universal software environment for modeling distributed systems, DSLab. The report by M.A. Belov (Associate Professor, Department of System Analysis and Management, Dubna State University) explored the importance of forming a relevant representation of present-day scalable software and hardware solutions for data storage, processing and analysis on the example of digital footprints within the training of in-demand IT professionals for the global digital economy using the innovative educational cloud data center “Virtual Computer Lab”.

A new feature in the conference programme was the student scientific session, at which students who had passed the selection at the JINR Spring School of Information Technologies delivered talks on the results of their work.

The GRID’2023 programme embraced two workshops. One of them, devoted to the issue of modeling and creating digital twins for new generation reactors, was organized jointly by MLIT JINR, FLNP JINR and the MBIR Consortium. The second workshop on computing for radiobiology and medicine was conducted by the JINR MLIT and LRB team together with Serbian colleagues. In addition, there were held round tables on the development of IT education with the participation of numerous representatives of universities and on the RDIG-M (Russian Data-Intensive Grid Certificate Authority) distributed infrastructure for data processing, storage and analysis within large-scale scientific projects in Russia.

In total, 30 plenary and over 135 sessional talks were delivered within the conference. Fruitful discussions were held by the conference participants, new IT projects aimed at the development of distributed and high-performance computing were proposed, and new directions in collaboration between MLIT and organizations, universities of Russia and the JINR Member States emerged.

Traditionally, during the conference, a boat trip along the Volga and Dubna rivers, followed by a barbecue in Ratmino, took place.

At the closing of the conference, words of gratitude were expressed to the organizing committee for the high level of holding the conference.

The presentations of the talks and photos are available at GRID’2023. Selected proceedings of the conference will be published in the Physics of Elementary Particles and Atomic Nuclei journal.

Video-report "Distributed computing and Grid-technologies" – from youtube.

International conference GRID’2023 finished in Dubna – from JINR site.