News

On May 29, 2025, the virtual meeting room of the “EPICURE meets Slovenia” webinar welcomed researchers, developers, and high-performance computing (HPC) enthusiasts from across Slovenia and beyond. The event was organized by IZUM in collaboration with the Institute Jožef Stefan (IJS) and the SMASH project, a post-doctoral machine learning project. Presentations were led by Dr. Žiga Zebec, Samo Miklavc, Teo Prica from IZUM, and Dr. Alja Prah, Dejan Lesjak, and Sebastien Strban from IJS.

 

Hosted via Zoom, the webinar aimed to introduce national researchers to the EPICURE project, its mission, and the opportunities it offers for leveraging European-level HPC resources, particularly on HPC Vega. The session was designed to be highly interactive, encouraging participants to share insights about their ongoing or planned research projects and identify how EPICURE support could accelerate their scientific goals. A total of 23 scientists participated in this event.

 

 

Session 1A: Introduction to EPICURE and HPC Vega

 

Dr. Žiga Zebec and Samo Miklavc kicked off the event with a comprehensive overview of HPC Vega and the EPICURE project. They provided foundational insights into the architecture, capabilities, and usage of HPC Vega, a EuroHPC JU flagship system located at IZUM, Maribor, Slovenia.

 

Key highlights included:

 

• – HPC Vega Quick Facts: with a performance of 6.9 PFLOPS, 1020 compute nodes, Infiniband 100Gb/s networking, and over 19 PB of storage, Vega is a powerful resource for both national and European research communities;

 

• – System Overview: Vega’s hardware and system software were detailed, including its CPU/GPU partitions, Lustre and Ceph storage systems, and the Slurm workload manager;

 

• – User Access and Support: the availability of beginner-friendly tools and support services, such as SSH key generation, OTP login, module-based software environments, and user documentation, was emphasized.

 

The session concluded with a walkthrough of the Vega portal, its user documentation, and support channels. The presenters also explained how to access national computational resources at the SLING or the European Computational Resources Consortium at EuroHPC JU.

 

 

Session 2A: How to Apply for EPICURE Support

 

Building on the technical foundation of HPC Vega, Dr. Žiga Zebec and Samo Miklavc shifted the focus to the practical aspects of applying for EuroHPC resources and getting EPICURE support. The participants were guided through the EuroHPC JU portal, demonstrating how to submit proposals for computing resources across various access modes: Development, Regular, Extreme Scale, and AI Factory calls.

 

They also introduced the concept of Level 2 and Level 3 support, where Application Support Teams (ASTs) assist users in code optimisation, porting, and scalability improvements. The presenters used a DEMO project to illustrate the proposal submission process, emphasizing the importance of clearly defining:

 

• – Project goals;

 

• – Codes and data;

 

• – Resource requirements;

 

• – Challenges and optimization needs.

 

Participants were encouraged to explore the EuroHPC JU calls, with specific guidance on aligning their research with eligibility criteria and the expected projects outcomes.

 

 

Session 1B: Project Details and Interactive Q&A

 

Teo Prica led the interactive session, where attendees briefly described their ongoing research projects and the challenges they encounter. The goal was to gather insights into projects running on HPC Vega and identify those that could benefit from EPICURE support.

 

Each participant was asked to address the following questions:

 

• – Project goals?

 

• – Codes and data?

 

• – Challenges, and how can we help?

 

This session was crucial for aligning the community needs with the available support services and for understanding the diversity of research domains utilizing HPC Vega. The scientific projects presented ranged from particle physics and clinical text classification to quantum simulations and tissue mechanics.

 

 

Session 2B: Best Practices from EPICURE Projects

 

The final session, led by the IJS team, presented best practices and real-world examples from ongoing EPICURE projects. These included:

 

• – EPSILOD Framework: scalability improvements in iterative loop stencils through CPU/GPU placement optimization and compiler tuning;

 

• – On Device AI Assistant: deployment of distributed AI models using RAY and Singularity containers, optimizing tensor-parallel strategies;

 

• – Financial Virtual Assistant for Portfolio Management (FVAP): optimising GPU communication with NCCL tuning, mixed precision training, and memory-efficient data loading.

 

These case studies provided valuable insights into how users can optimise their workflows and performance, taking advantage of Vega’s capabilities.

 

 

Live Q&A and Discussion

 

The “EPICURE meets Slovenia” event concluded with a Live Q&A and discussion, where participants could ask questions and receive real-time feedback from the EPICURE team. The ZOOM chat was actively monitored throughout the session, ensuring that all technical, procedural, or strategic queries were addressed.

Some key discussion points included:

 

• – Containerization and Portability: using Singularity containers with –fakeroot to streamline application deployment;

 

• – Workflow Management: tools like Snakemake, MLflow, and WandB for orchestrating and tracking complex HPC workflows;

 

• – Code Optimization: profiling with tools like perf, score-p, and likwid, and leveraging hybrid MPI+OpenMP parallelism.

 

 

Closing Remarks of “EPICURE meets Slovenia”

 

The webinar ended with a strong emphasis on the open-access nature of EPICURE and the importance of engaging with its support structures. Dr. Zebec reiterated that EPICURE is not just a technical initiative but a collaborative platform for advancing European research through shared expertise and resources.

 

He concluded by inviting participants to stay connected via the EPICURE mailing list, follow-up workshops, and future webinars. The team also encouraged attendees to reach out directly for further assistance, especially those planning to submit proposals for EuroHPC resources.

 

 

Final Thoughts

 

“EPICURE meets Slovenia” was a testament to the growing synergy between national research efforts and pan-European HPC infrastructure. With its distributed ASTs and a clear mission to enhance user capabilities, EPICURE is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of HPC in Slovenia and beyond.