The ANITA meeting will be followed by a 3 day numerical astrophysics summer school from the 15th-17th Feb (preliminary program at http://moca.monash.edu/anita2012/index.php?page=program). Topics covered will be:

• Introduction to programming for High Performance Computing
• N-body methods
• Grid-based hydrodynamics
• Particle-based hydrodynamics
• Cosmological simulation techniques
• Semi-analytic models of Galaxy formation

Registration for the summer school is open to all advanced undergraduate, honours and PhD students as well as active Astronomy and Astrophysics researchers within Australia and New Zealand. However, numbers are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis with preference to students.

Student travel grants are available for attendance at both the ANITA meeting and the summer school. Please indicate on the registration form if you are interested.

Contact: Daniel Price (daniel.price [at] monash.edu) or your nearest ANITA committee member.

The latest edition of our newsletter is now live (Download).

• News and upcoming events.
• A feature article on MoCA (the Monash Centre for Astrophysics).
• This quarter’s crossword theme: Classical.

Answers for the crossword are as follows:

Across:
1. Eris; 2. Sedna; 6. Mars; 7. Cruithne; 8. Andromeda; 10. Altair; 11. Haumea; 12. Procyon; 16. Mizar; 17. Aldebaran; 18. Arcturus

Down:
1. Enceladus; 2. Venus; 3. Makemake; 4. Orion; 7. Cassiopeia; 9. Formalhaut; 13. Cepheus; 14. Rigel; 15. Pasiphae

ANITA wishes to congratulate Brain P. Schmidt for being one of the three cosmologists awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe. In addition to his scientific exploits, Brian has worked tirelessly for broader Australian Astronomy community since moving to ANU over a decade and a half ago. He is a strong supporter of theoretical and numerical astrophysics. We look forward to his continued involvement in the years to come.

We held an ANITA townhall meeting at this year’s ASA ASM. Here are the minutes of the meeting:

1) Darren presented an overview of …

• ANITA; it’s intent and purpose
• our newletters for the past year
• our demographics. Currently 87 members; 74% male and 43% students
• our website

2) Daniel presented a discussion of this past year’s meetings and the upcoming ANITA meeting at Monash

• ANITA 2011 Workshop: 38 participants & 18 talks
• ANITA 2012 Workshop: 13-14 Feb @ Monash
• Daniel also announced a computational meeting associated with the ANITA 2012 meeting
• Symposium on Nuclei in the Cosmos

3) Jarrod presented an update on gSTAR

• available ~ Sept 2011
• supplied by SGI
• 50 GPU nodes
• QDR Infiniband
• 40+ GPUs in 2nd phase (late 2011)
• 75% for national astronomy access
• any astronomer at a publicly funded institution
• 50% is merit allocation
• remainder for general access
• 1M CPU-hours available on Swinburne system
• Jarrod also reminded us about the Melbourne HPC GPU workshop @ Monash; July 13-14

4) Luke Hodkinson gave an overview of NCI Support for supercomputing

• NCI merit allocation schemes
• NCI support for GPUing software etc
• Those interested can submit project requests HERE

5) Darren lead a discussion of the Midterm Review recommendation: “Over the period of 2012-2015, under the coordination of ANITA, a strategic plan for theoretical astrophysics should be developed.”

• Comments from the floor: what is our resource use and research focus now? Only with that knowledge can we say where we are going.
• ACTION: ensure that computing facilities are acknowledged in publications so that we can collect statistics. In particular: do we have to identify areas to concentrate on?
• Darren presented ideas from steering committee meeting:
  • Create a strategic plan
  • Submit to the Academy of Science
  • Consultation of both theorists and observers
  • Prepared by ANITA steering committee
  • Input from a (small?) advisory committee
  • This should be a plan for the next 3 years as well as to position theory for the 2015-2025 Decandal Plan
  • Submission date 1st March 2012
• ACTION: The steering committee will initiate the strategic plan process and begin consultation with the theory community in the next 1-2 months.

The slides from the meeting can be found here: (Download)

The latest edition of our newsletter is now live (Download).

• News and upcoming events.
• A feature article on WiggleZ and the Gigaparsec WiggleZ (GiggleZ) simulations.
• This quarter’s crossword theme: Nuclear Astrophysics.

Stay tuned to this space for crossword answers.

The Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment (MASSIVE) provides Australian researchers with access to two high performance computers located at Monash University and Australian Synchrotron. To introduce these systems and provide support for Australian and Victorian researchers to make effective use of HPC GPU facilities, MASSIVE is running a two-day HPC GPU computing workshop on 13th-14th of July at Monash University, Clayton Campus.

In addition to a range of talks on HPC GPU computing, including presentations by Dr Mark Harris from NVIDIA, the workshop will introduce the MASSIVE architecture and the way researchers can access and make use of the systems. Talks will range from how to undertake GPU programming to domain specific presentations in visualisation, image processing, astrophysics and computational fluid dynamics.

For researchers wanting to have hands on assistance with using MASSIVE, an additional computer lab session is planned after the close of presentations (lunchtime 14th July). In the lab researchers will have the opportunity to undertake tutorials assisted by MASSIVE specialists.

MASSIVE workshops are open to all Australian researchers. Registration is required for catering purposes.

Further information about the workshop, including a draft schedule and registration details, are available at: http://www.massive.org.au/events/GPUWorkshop-13July2011

In 2012 (30th July-3rd Aug) ANU will be hosting a Winter School to help prepare postgraduate students and young researchers in the multi-disciplinary topics (e.g.,supernovae, stellar nucleosynthesis, reaction rates, nuclear physics, geochemistry, and presolar grain analysis) that will be covered at the Nuclei in the Cosmos (NIC XII) conference. Lecturers are still to be decided but will include a selection of Australian and international experts on the above topics.

The meeting will be held right after the School in Cairns.

Please send queries to amanda.karakas@anu.edu.au or chiaki@mso.anu.edu.au.

Throughout 2011 Swinburne University is undergoing a phased upgrade of
its HPC facilities which will incorporate gSTAR
- the GPU Supercomputer for Theoretical Astrophysics Research.
gSTAR will operate as a national facility for astronomers with funding
coming from a Commonwealth Government Education Investment Fund (EIF)
grant obtained with the assistance of Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL).

Swinburne has recently signed a contract with Silicon Graphics (SGI) to provide
the first phase of the HPC upgrade. This includes the majority of the compute nodes
that will make up gSTAR. These compute nodes contain approximately 120 nVidia
C2070 and M2090 GPUs, over 600 Intel Westmere CPU-cores and 2400 GB of
CPU memory. The interconnect will be QDR infiniband and there will be 200 TB
of disk storage available for gSTAR users. More GPUs will be added in subsequent
phases.

At this stage it is envisaged that the compute capacity will come online in
September. More details on how to obtain an account and time on gSTAR will be
circulated to the community closer to the opening date.

Updated information will be posted on the ANITA news page as it becomes available ( anita.edu.au/news/).

The Astronomy Decadal Plan Mid-Term Review (MTR) has just been completed and provides a detailed snapshot of the current state of astronomy in Australia. The report outlines a number of key recommendations for the community to help us capitalise on upcoming opportunities and navigate the inevitable challenges such opportunities bring.

The review includes sections for theoretical astrophysics and high performance computing. Key recommendations there include:

(Theory): “Over the period 2012–2015, under the coordination of ANITA, a strategic plan for theoretical astrophysics should be developed.”

(HPC) “Astronomy should build an astronomical data fabric that links high-performance resources … to create new opportunities for discovery by Australian researchers based on data flowing from telescopes like SkyMapper, ASKAP and the MWA.”

No doubt ANITA will be heavily involved in both of the above initiatives on your behalf and for your benefit. For a link to the full Mid-Term Review document head over to the online ANITA news room ( anita.edu.au/news/).