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SCOS announces major steps for the Scientific Computing Community
In its latest plenary session, SCOS announces major steps in putting the best software out of the crowd!
PARIS, 30 June 2008
Held at Clamart, into the EDF R&D Center, on June 26th, the last OSCOS plenary session was a success. All the OSCOS partners were represented and several big steps have been taken. The almost 30 people working heavily to make the project a success presented the main progress of the project the past 6 months in the morning and working classes in the afternoon.
Presentation included:
- SCOS Silver / SCOS Gold: the labeling process (Jean-Marie Davesnes, Oxalya). Based on the work of the whole consortium, SCOS will provide labels for scientific computing software based on 3 criteria: (1) systems interoperability of applications (relocation capabilities, hardware supported, parallelization capabilities…); (2) Strategic and Economic strengths; (3) Technical information availability. The best scientific computing codes will be distinguished and recognized for the valuable information available, and SCOS will help them to stand out of the crowd!
- The SCOS scientific computing software directory (Jean-Marie Davesnes, Oxalya). Fully dedicated to scientific computing, the “SCOS scientific computing software directory” is a participative tool in which users can create, modify and complete application’s card. Each card contains a wide range of information from the general ones (name of the application, website, license…) to the more precise ones (output formats, type of equation used…). A real gold mine to find valuable information for scientists, looking for Open Source or Commercial applications to make science every day stronger.
- V3D developments progress in Scientific Visualization through the web (Bernard Nouailhas, EDF). Results will to be presented at SIGGRAPH and the WEB3D Symposium in Los Angeles, August 2008.
- Code coupling: latest steps (Cédric Forgues, CS). The latest format converters developed in the project would be soon available to partners.
- Large deployment tools with Pluse2 (Arnaud Laprévote, Mandriva). In the SCOS frame, the Mandriva Pulse2 tool will enable large deployments of scientific computing software, up to several thousands desktops. Used for several demonstrations in the project, an overall presentation was performed in the morning for all participants, followed by a work class training in the afternoon.
- Test platform for experimentation of the project (Denis Foueillassar, Bull). The SCOS consortium members will have access to the test platform until the end of the project, including a SCOS compliant Linux distribution for targeted software.
- Needs of the scientific computing field (Christian Saguez, Teratec). Teratec’s president presented the main challenges of scientific computing software, the opportunities offered by all the work provided by the SCOS project and the outputs presented in the morning. Christian Saguez also emphases the opportunities of following projects to SCOS such as Open HPC and Collaviz, as well as the need of an international extension of the consortium.
Alban Schmutz, coordinator of the project, declares “All these presentations show that we the objectives we defined at the launch of the project in 2006 where achievable. All partners are focused on delivering the final deliverables by the end of the project in December 2008”.
About SCOS/OSCOS
Scientific Computing has to enter the world of industrialized solutions. Shared standards and interoperability should be the rule, no the exception any. This is the aim of the OSCOS/SCOS project: making scientist's life easiest, sharing tools and results with its colleague when needed.
To achieve this aim, is structured SCOS into 4 WorkGroups: System Interoperability, Applicative Interoperability, Industrialization Tools, Support Team.
SCOS/OSCOS involves 23 industrial and academic partners invested at an international level to support scientific computing software strengthening. The project is co-funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and supported by the SYSTEM@TIC-Paris-Region competitiveness cluster.
More information: www.oscos.org
