[GFS-WG] CFP: Data Analysis Challenge for Finding Supernovae

[Osamu Tatebe]

Please forward to others who might be interested; my apologies for any 
duplicate copies received.

This is an international challenge contest.  Every participant
competes with others in developing the fastest distributed analysis
program using real scientific data taken by SUBARU telescope on the
challenge platform (12 clusters) in Japan.

Registration will close	on Jun 16.  

Thanks,
Osamu

**********************************************************************
		       Call for Participations

	 The First International Data Analysis Challenge for
			  Finding Supernovae
		http://www.cluster2008.org/challenge/

	      In conjunction with IEEE Cluster/Grid 2008
	       in Tsukuba, Japan, Sep 29 to Oct 1, 2008

			     Supported by

      Japan MEXT grant-in-aid for Priority area Research called
       Cyber Infrastructure for the Information-explosion Era.
	     (Principal Researcher: Prof. M. Kitsuregawa)

	Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing,
	Information Processing Society of Japan (SIGHPC, IPSJ)

IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Scalable Computing (TCSC)

			   Contributions by

       Center for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba

       Information Technology Center, The University of Tokyo

  Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University

	 Global Scientific Information and Computing Center,
		    Tokyo Institute of Technology

**********************************************************************

The importance of large scale data analysis increases year by year in
not only a scientific domain such as high energy physics, astronomy,
biology but also an enterprise domain such as web and mail search
engines.  Moreover, collaborative e-Science activity requires
efficient data sharing and data analysis within a virtual organization
that may consist of several institutes located distantly.

The international data analysis challenge --- Finding Supernovae ---
facilitates such a trend and encourages efficient data analysis
efforts in distributed environment.  In this challenge, huge amount of
real scientific data taken by the Subaru telescope for seven years is
used to find new and unknown supernova candidates using several
cluster systems in Japan that consist of thousands of CPU cores, which
includes the InTrigger info-plosion platform and Tokyo Tech Presto III.

We are inviting research teams or individuals to participate in the
challenge.  Researchers and students working on parallel and
distributed computing and large scale data analysis as well as
astronomical scientists are welcome.  Selected teams will be invited
to present their efforts at the IEEE Cluster/Grid conference.  The
winner will receive a student travel award to help with travel to the
conference.

* Subaru Telescope

Subaru is an 8.2 meter optical-infrared telescope at the summit of
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan (NAOJ), National Institutes of Natural Science.  For details,
see http://www.subarutelescope.org/

* InTrigger info-plosion platform

InTrigger is a distributed computing platform spread around Japan.  As
of the competition, it consists of about 850 CPU cores across eleven
clusters.

* Challenge Criteria

Real scientific data taken by the Subaru telescope is dispersed across
several clusters in the Challenge platform.  The challengers find all
supernova candidates using the Challenge platform.  To find all
supernova candidates, it is necessary to compare every two shots taken
at an interval of one month.  The data analysis program is given,
while it is allowed to optimize it as long as the result is not
changed.  There are two challenge categories BS and FT.

** Category BS: basic category

The challengers compete in the total time to find all supernova
candidates.  There is no restriction on programming language and
distributed computing middleware.  Any failure during the execution is
not assumed in this category.

** Category FT: fault tolerant category

The challengers compete in the total time to find all supernova
candidates under a scenario of artificial node failure.  Some
processes will be killed according to the failure scenario.  Although
a trial scenario is prepared, a scenario for the challenge is not
provided until the final measurement.  There is no restriction on
programming language and distributed computing middleware as the
Category BS.

* Important Dates

Registration open		May 12
Registration close		Jun 16
Final report submission		Aug 15
Final judge notification	Aug 22
Award Ceremony during IEEE Cluster/Grid 2008
				Sep 29 to Oct 1

* Challenge Committee

Osamu Tatebe, University of Tsukuba
Kenjiro Taura, University of Tokyo
Toshio Endo, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Daisaku Yokoyama, University of Tokyo
Hidemoto Nakada, AIST
Naotaka Yamamoto, AIST
Masatoshi Ohishi, NAOJ
Yuji Shirasaki, NAOJ
Naoki Yasuda, University of Tokyo
Gabriel Antoniu, IRISA/INRIA
Thilo Kielmann, Vrije Universiteit
Ann Chervenak, ISI
Philip Papadopoulos, SDSC

* Steering Committee

Osamu Tatebe, University of Tsukuba
Kenjiro Taura, University of Tokyo
Kento Aida, National Institute of Informatics
Yoshio Tanaka, AIST
Isao Ono, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Susumu Date, Osaka University
Gabriel Antoniu, IRISA/INRIA
Thilo Kielmann, Vrije Universiteit
Ann Chervenak, ISI
Philip Papadopoulos, SDSC