BalticLSC

BalticLSC helped smaller innovative businesses, startups, research centers and independent innovators take advantage of complex data thanks to the improved access to large-scale computing.

The challenge

Processing data is a challenge

New businesses require the processing of large quantities of data which triggers the increased need for large-scale calculations (LSC). The reality is that primarily global corporations and large-scale research centers can afford such complex supercomputing environments. Meanwhile, small innovative companies, independent research centers, startups and innovators often lack the knowledge, competence and resources to exploit such complex data processing fully. Small players suffer from limited abilities and high costs to develop and commercialise innovations based on the use of LSC. The PRACE report indicates that the EU's GDP would rise by up to 2-3% in 2020 provided that smaller businesses/research could take advantage of complex data.

Large-scale computing environment as a solution

The challenges above explain the need to create an affordable LSC environment where non-IT specialists could easier learn and use and grant access to remote SMEs and research centers. It shall be backed up by a substantial and unified computing platform and computing software developed specifically for this purpose.

The project BalticLSC created a supercomputing environment comprising hardware prototypes, software tools and application recommendations. It offered these services to small and medium-sized enterprises for new product development. In this way, small research centres can use their computing resources more efficiently.

Budgets

BalticLSC
in numbers

2.39

Million

Total
1.82

Million

Erdf
0.00

Million

Eni + Russia
0.00

Million

Norway

Achievements

Valuable knowledge acquired thanks to transnational cooperation

BalticLSC brought together technology creators, business development organizations and science parks from eight countries. Together, they developed an open-source code of the BalticLSC Software and the BalticLSC Platform, with its complete documentation, including the Platform installation guide, the Software Design Model and the Developer's Guide. The Software and the Platform comprise the Baltic LSC Environment, which will be used mainly by organisations that intend to design and develop new innovative products and services based on supercomputing services at the time of their design or execution, and organisations that want to offer supercomputing services. Specifically, as a concrete example, if a company develops a marine system, it has the possibility to access an LSC service supplier on the BalticLSC portal. This is followed by a series of calculations in an easy-to-use computation application language and within a network of LSC nodes, combining their power according to the developers' needs. This chain enables the company to deliver a final product or service to the market much faster.

Based on the technical feedback gathered during dedicated workshop sessions, results provided small-scale organisations (SMEs, startups, research centres) and individuals (innovators, students) with valuable knowledge regarding large-scale computations. Most targeted companies operate in engineering, IT, education and life sciences.

BalticLSC Network

The project partners established BalticLSC Network. All the declared computation nodes (Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden) are operational and can be used as part of the Network to perform large-scale computations. Computations within the BalticLSC Environment can thus be distributed across several computation nodes in the Baltic Sea Region. The users can execute their computations on any or all of the nodes, depending on the type of their computation problem. The users can select nodes depending on their available resources (CPUs, GPUS, memory, network bandwidth) or geographical location (specific country).

Outputs

Handbook on Doing Business Using the BalticLSC System

The Handbook is a practical guide on how to include the BalticLSC System into businesses of SMEs and other innovative institutions. The developed business models describe necessary measures and rationale regarding the transfer of BalticLSC solutions to the market and usage of BalticLSC resources in business. They also provide guidelines and scenarios on how to maintain and extend the BalticLSC network throughout time, both from technical and business development points of view. The aim of the handbook is to influence the ways the BalticLSC Platform is offered and distributed to the clients in terms of overall business strategy. The handbook will be used by various parties and their management, interested in developing strategies to offer and/or use services based on the BalticLSC system.

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BalticLSC Handbook

The BalticLSC Handbook is a collection of instructions, tutorials, step-by-step guides and practical examples on how to use the BalticLSC Environment. Parts of the handbook have been extended with YouTube tutorial videos. The material covers areas of BalticLSC Environment use such as: - Tips and guidelines on hardware selection for the BalticLSC Hardware; - Installation and configuration of the BalticLSC Platform; - Connection and configuration of the BalticLSC Platform; - Administration of the BalticLSC Environment; - Development of new Computation Modules; - Development of Computation Applications in CAL with the use of existing Computation Modules; - Performing computations on the BalticLSC Network using a Computations Application.

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BalticLSC Software Prototype

The BalticLSC Software Prototype is an open-source code that, together with the BalticLSC Platform, creates the BalticLSC Large-Scale Computation Environment. The code is available in an open-source form on a public GitHub repository (https://github.com/balticlsc). The BalticLSC Software Prototype allows the end-user to run advanced computations after providing necessary input data through the web application. This document contains brief descriptions of the repository to facilitate understanding, use, and further development of code. The BalticLSC Software uses the BalticLSC Platform to perform complex distributed computations and consists of three main components: - The BalticLSC Computation Tool; - The Computation Application Language Editor; - The BalticLSC Admin Tool.

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BalticLSC Platform Implementation Report

This document is a report describing the activities and results of the implementation of the prototype of the BalticLSC Platform. The report includes the description of the results of the activity: BalticLSC Platform code, the configuration and activities performed to set up the working BalticLSC Platform prototype at five partner sites. The BalticLSC network is the BalticLSC Platform deployed at the following partner sites: RISE (Sweden), IMCS (Latvia), TSP (Estonia), WUT (Poland) and MTC (Finland). BalticLSC Software connects all sites to form a distributed large-scale computing system. The BalticLSC Platform is part of the BalticLSC Environment responsible for administrating the computation resources and performing advanced computations commissioned by the BalticLSC Software.

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