The Early Science web pages have been integrated better with the rest of the ALCF website. From the ALCF page (http://www.alcf.anl.gov), the “Research Collaborations” pull-down menu entry “Early Science Program” brings up the new ESP main page. Individual ESP project descriptions have been moved out into individual web pages, consistent with our INCITE and ALCC project pages.

The convenience URL http://esp.alcf.anl.gov that many of us have been using to get to the ESP website now points to the new main ESP page.

If you are thinking about registering for the Early Science Program Kick-Off Workshop, please note that if your institution does not already have an AECI agreement signed with IBM (or is one of a few institutions with agreements in progress), there will not be time to get this done before the Workshop, so you will not be able to attend. If you want to inquire about whether your institution is covered by or in the process of signing an agreement, email [email protected] . (AECI is the acronym for IBM’s flavor of nondisclosure agreement.)

If you are not planning to attend the Workshop, but do intend to work on one of the Early Science Program projects, please notify [email protected], indicating your institution (university/lab/company where you work). We need to get IBM a complete list of institutions requesting AECI agreements for ESP work as soon as possible. The number is already getting large; at some point we’ll have to close the door and not accept any additional new institutions. If you’ve already let us know about your institution via email or registering for the Workshop, you don’t need to send anything further.

It’s important that you register for the upcoming Kick-Off Workshop, if you plan to attend. If you think you may attend, but don’t want to register yet, send email to [email protected] to let us know. (If you’ve already let us know of your intent, you don’t need to send another mail.) Most importantly, we need to know your home institution, so we know which institutions will need a nondisclosure agreement. Please also compare your citizenship with the lists in the earlier post on export control, to make sure you won’t have a problem attending because of that.

As you probably know, the Early Science Program has funding to hire postdocs—about 15 in total. We are soliciting your help in recommending candidates for these postdoctoral appointments. The postdocs will be employed and supervised by the ALCF, and will sit here at Argonne, but it is expected that they may travel to home institutions of ESP project investigators for in-depth collaboration and mentoring. Project PIs or other senior participants are expected to mentor the postdoc working on the project, especially in the scientific research area and numerical methods of the project. The postdocs should be participants in analyzing and publishing results of the calculations run on Mira in the Early Science period. ALCF staff will mentor postdocs on code development, performance evaluation, and optimization for Blue Gene/Q. In supervising postdocs, the ALCF will ensure that the postdocs meet the goals of the Early Science Program, the specific project goals, and the postdocs’ career development goals.

The official announcement of the ESP Kick-Off Workshop is now out. The web site has the registration form, the draft agenda, and more: http://workshops.alcf.anl.gov/esp10

If you like lots of messages, and want to get messages containing new blog posts as they appear, you can subscribe to various-format feeds of the ESP Blog. For example, the URL for the RSS 2.0 feed is:

http://esp.alcf.anl.gov/blog/?feed=rss2

There’s a lot of software out there for reading RSS feeds. Some email programs, for example, allow you to subscribe to feeds, resulting in messages appearing in your mail Inbox when new blog posts go up.

Participants in the ESP projects must meet U.S. Export Control criteria  in order to have access to Blue Gene/Q information. This includes information to be discussed at the Kick-Off Workshop. The PIs received some email about this; here is the relevant part (note that the Workshop website referred to is not yet live):

Participants for this workshop must meet U.S. Government Export Control criteria. As a result, individuals from these countries may not attend: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria.

Individuals from these countries are eligible to attend: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States (including Resident Aliens, i.e. “Green Card” holders)

If your country of origin is NOT listed, while it may be possible for your institution to obtain the additional clearance required, it may take significant time (six months or longer). Please note that all non-U.S. citizens must complete the necessary 593 documentation process explained in the registration website

IBM is in the midst of internal discussions about how to manage all the nondisclosure agreements for ESP project institutions. Until we have further word on this from IBM, ESP projects should not contact IBM directly about agreements as was recommended in months past. I’ll post here as soon as we have word from IBM, which I hope will set us up so that Kick-Off Workshop participants will be covered.

For those that do not know what this is: Anyone wanting to access early Blue Gene/Q hardware, or access or discuss Blue Gene/Q software such as compilers will have to be covered by an agreement between your institution and IBM. IBM doesn’t call these NDAs, but rather AECPs.

The ALCF Early Science Program Kick-Off Workshop has been scheduled for October 18-19 2010 at Argonne’s TCS Conference Center.

Who should attend? We encourage a representative from the PIs/co-PIs to attend if available to help with project planning and discussion of postdocs. We also encourage a representative from the project who is deeply involved in code development, to learn about the Blue Gene/Q environment and discuss development strategies. If you will attend, please register as soon as the website becomes available. If you want to informally indicate your plan to attend now, you can email [email protected] to let us know.