Continuing to build the Tier 2 HPC community at eResearch

The 2021 NCRIS roadmap highlights that while High Performance Computing (HPC) in Australia is provided by two Tier-1 facilities, access is limited due to strong demand. As a result, some institutions have developed Tier-2 HPC; however, these facilities are not always widely available. In Europe, the EuroHPC Strategy demonstrates clear advantages to networking institutional Tier 2 facilities with Tier 1 HPC and commercial cloud computing offerings. In Japan, Tier 2 facilities have integrated into a national research storage capacity. Following the success of last year s BoF, this BoF will again invite key staff from Australia s Tier 2 facilities to provide a quick update (5min each): how their facility has changed in the last 12 months, their plans going forward, their mix of users and typical workloads, challenges they are facing, and how any of the above differ from last year. We have strong support from the Tier 1 facilities and HPC leads at Monash, UNSW and UQ to hold this BoF. A list of common issues, particularly any differences from last year, will be generated from these updates. These will be discussed by a panel invited by the organising group and will involve the wider BoF audience. Supporting users and workloads who are split between the Tier 1 and Tier 2 systems will also be covered. Items discussed will be documented and shared. The BoF attendees will determine if there is value in continuing a working group of Tier 2 facilities to identify areas of common strategic and technical alignment.