About
One of the main goals of the SwissTwins project is to support simulations and data analysis, as well as scientific workflows, in the weather & climate vertical. A key focus is on the development of middleware that leverages the HPCN funded "Alps" infrastructure at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). In addition, SwissTwins aims to keep the Swiss research infrastructures of the ETH Domain, which rely on HPC, well-integrated in Europe and competitive at a global level. The project started on the 1st December 2022 with funding from SERI, and runs until the end of October 2025. The SwissTwins project partners are PSI, ETHZ SPCL, EPFL and ETHZ CSCS (project lead).
Project Partners
EPFL Scientific IT & Applications Support (SCITAS)
SCITAS brings significant experience and expertise with using public cloud resources for HPC to the project
PSI Science IT Infrastructure and Services (PSI AWI)
CSCS & PSI AWI are collaborating to move the next generation of PSI HPC clusters to the Alps infrastructure
PSI Laboratory for Materials Simulations (PSI LMS)
PSI LMS develops the AiiDA workflow engine, which is being enhanced to support Weather & Climate workflows
ETH Zurich Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory (SPCL)
SPCL have developed the data-flow centric (DaCe) optimisation framework for scientific simulations, as well as SimFS
ETH Zurich Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS)
CSCS is developing new technologies, such as versatile software-defined clusters (vClusters), to manage multiple scientific platforms on the Alps infrastructure
- Work Packages
The SwissTwins project is comprised of ten Work Packages. These ten Work Packages, along with their WP Lead, are shown in the table below.
Work Package WP Lead WP1: Management and Coordination
WP1 is responsible for the day-to-day management and coordination of the SwissTwins project, and is overseen by a project management office (PMO) based at CSCS.
ETHZ CSCS WP2: Enhancing the AiiDA Workflow Engine To Run W&C Workflows
The goal of WP2 is to enhance the AiiDA workflow engine in order to be able to support and execute Weather and Climate Workflows.
PSI LMS WP3: vCluster Pipeline Creation and Automation
The goal of WP3 is to develop the pipelines and automation to provision versatile software-defined clusters (vClusters)
ETHZ CSCS WP4: vCluster Mobility and Geo-redundancy Use Cases
The goal of WP4 is to make the vCluster technology portable in order to be able to be deployed on diverse infrastructure, including cloud providers
EPFL SCITAS WP5: vCluster Infrastructure-as-a-Service
The goal of WP5 is to add Infrastructure-as-a-Service capability with role-based access and control to Alps to answer specific scientific use cases, including those related to Weather & Climate
PSI AWI/
ETHZ CSCSWP6: Container Technology
The goal of WP6 is to provide a solution for a tenant-managed software stack whilst preserving application performance, and to make container technology a key element in the deployment of execution environments
ETHZ CSCS WP7: API to Supercomputing Infrastructure
The goal of WP7 is to further develop a web-facing API to interact with supercomputing infrastructure
ETHZ CSCS WP8: DaCe Optimisation Toolchain for Weather and Climate Software
The goal of WP8 is to improve the Data-Centric (DaCe) programming paradigm from a research environment towards production-level readiness
ETHZ SPCL WP9: SimFS based Development of Data Streaming Technologies
The goal of WP9 is to improve SimFS from a research environment towards production-level readiness
ETHZ CSCS WP10: Deployment of Data Hypercube and Network Services
The goal of WP10 is to procure and deploy a high performance storage cluster in the ECMWF data centre in Bologna, and connect it to both the Alps infrastructure in Lugano and the ECMWF infrastructure in Bologna
ETHZ CSCS - Selected Outreach Activities
A selection of outreach activities related to the work in SwissTwins is shown below.
- Lightning talk in SC24 BoF: "Real-Time Scientific Data Streaming to HPC Nodes: Challenges and Innovations"
- CUG 2024 paper: "Cloud-Native Slurm management on HPE Cray EX"
- 15th Annual HPC-AI Swiss Conference presentation: "Making HPC Containers More Flexible with OCI Hooks and Sarus"
- SOS-26 Session chair and presentation: "Enhancing HPC Service Management using FirecREST API"
- SC24 Workshop co-chair "CANOPIE-HPC"
- Garr article about Data Hypercube network connection between CSCS and ECMWF: "https://www.garrnews.it/caffe-scientifico/tre-reti-al-servizio-della-terra"
- Collaborators
We are grateful to the following collaborators for their invaluable assistance towards the work in the SwissTwins project.
- The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
- The Center for Climate Systems Modeling (C2SM)
- The Swiss Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss)
- The EXtreme scale Computing and data platform for cLoud-resolving weAther and clImate Modeling (EXCLAIM)
- The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa)