SingAREN supports SC23, Denver – the International Conference for High Performance Computing and Networking

Interview with Simon Peter Green, Senior Technical Specialist, SingAREN on his experiences of volunteering for the SCinet Fibre team. (Photo credits to SC23 Organiser)

22 Dec 2023 – The SC23 Supercomputing conference was hosted at the Colorado Convention Centre in Denver, USA from 6 to 17 Nov 2023. SCinet, the dedicated network for the conference,  facilitated a low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity to support the diverse need of all conference demonstrations and experiments in this event.

Given the scale of this conference, SCinet is a collaborative undertaking that brings together a diverse and skilled group of volunteers from academia, industry and research background; tapping into their unique skillsets and experience to form the backbone of SCinet from planning, design right up to implementation and maintenance of the network for this conference. 

SingAREN supported the SC23 by nominating Senior Technical Specialist, Simon Peter Green, as a volunteer for the SCinet Fibre team. The SCinet Fibre team was responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining the fibre optic network infrastructure throughout the event.

 

Meticulous network architecture design and bandwidth capability of the fibre cable layout from NOCs to each exhibition booth and floors must be in place prior to the SC23 event days.

During the setup stage, Simon had his first exposure to physically involved in deployment of aerial and floor fibre to lay and install fibre from NOCs to respective exhibition booths. After the installation of the fibre cables, connections must be tested and verified. During the event days, the team had to pro-actively monitor all connectivity and ensure datalinks were operating seamlessly. Any defectivity must be promptly troubleshoot and repaired. Upon closure of the event, teardown process was initiated. The Fibre team was responsible for removal and storage of all aerial fibre spools.

The Fibre team’s contributions to SCinet during SC23 were instrumental in creating a reliable and high-performance network infrastructure.

We chatted with Simon on his expectations of the work involved, before and after signing up as a volunteer for SC23 in Denver.

Simon responded that “It was an eye-opening experience seeing the week-long transformation from the exhibition floor being barebones to fully functioning for the SC23 conference. The amount of work by the SCinet Fibre Team to lay, protect, verify and fix (using fusion splicers) over 12 miles of fibres, to ensure high-speed connectivity between the exhibition booths back to the SC23 Network Operations Centres, was immense.”

When asked about what he had learned and how he would relate his new found experience to his work experience in SingAREN, Simon commented that “My usual day-to-day work at SingAREN is managing the network on the routing, switching and optical network side, so the SCinet Fibre Team’s work provided insight into the fibre laying and repair process that our dark fibre vendors would do on a daily basis.”

Lastly, we asked Simon if he would do this challenging task again in the next Supercomputing conference? He replied without hesitation:

“If I had the chance to participate in SCinet, I would do it again. It was an intense 14-days but the outcome and the comraderies from all the volunteers working together was an incredible experience.”

Great job and kudos to Simon !