Within the context of the EuroCC project and as a part of the National Competence Center (NCC) on High-Performance Computing (HPC), we are open to collaborations with companies from the industry to work on their computational problems. The NCC is coordinated by TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM, and Middle East Technical University and Sabancı University are its current partners. There are case studies in progress by all the partners (you can see the details for some). Depending on the expertise, you may want to work with any of the NCC partners. You can see the SU team from here.
Here are some questions and our answers on the details of these collaborations:
- What is the scope of the EuroCC project?
- The project aims to increase the awareness and competence on High-Performance Computing in Europe. It will establish National Competence Centres (NCCs) in the participating countries, which will be responsible for surveying and documenting the core HPC, HPDA, and AI activities and enriching the competencies in their respective countries. In addition, the NCCs will coordinate activities in all HPC-related fields at the national level and serve as a contact point for customers from industry, science, (future) HPC experts, and the general public alike.
- What is the scope of this collaboration?
- If you are a company with a problem that can be computationally solved, or if using HPC can decrease your design/production, etc. costs, we can share our expertise with you, guide you to the correct technology/hardware/software/algorithm, as well as to the correct set of educational resources. In addition, we can help you to design/transform/parallelize your code/software and run them on a modern HPC cluster with high efficiency. This being said the extent of our part within these use cases is limited by consultancy, and depending on the complexity of the problem, a PoC implementation. We will not develop a ready-to-use software and/or solution for the participating company for a case study.
- Does the company pay for this consultancy? What is expected from us during this collaboration?
- No. There is no financial responsibility and the consultancy and guidance will be provided for free. However, our expertise from previous case studies taught us that the companies must dedicate a sufficient amount of manpower to implement the solutions and internalize the know-how provided for a successful case study.
- Our company is working on the X sector? Are we eligible?
- Yes. Although the project prioritizes Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Data Science, any company from any sector can apply to the center for a case study and use the free services if it has an HPC-related problem and/or questions for its computational needs.
- We don’t have any computing resources in the company, how can this collaboration help us?
- If the company and the case study are accepted by the center, a sufficient amount of free computation time/resources will be provided by TRUBA to implement the solution(s). The HPC clusters TRUBA has and manages are equipped with cutting-edge computational resources. During the case studies, we will teach you how to leverage them for your business.
- We do not know much about High-Performance Computing but have computational needs. Can we still participate with a use case?
- Yes. You do not need to have expertise in HPC. With this case study, you will gain expertise on what you can (and cannot) do with HPC.
- We keep our codes/software internal and do not follow an open-source policy. Do we need to release the solutions for public access after the collaboration?
- No. As mentioned before, although we will help and guide you on the design and analysis phases, the actual solutions will be developed and implemented by the company. Hence, unless otherwise stated, you will keep all the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). However, depending on the agreement between the expert(s) and the company, and based on the amount of the contribution from the expert(s), various forms of financial partnerships and spin-off companies are possible (and encouraged). In any case, the NCC will not be involved in these partnerships and companies. This is solely in between the expert(s) and the company.
- We do not have the necessary software license in the company? Can you provide it?
- No. The center will not provide any commercial license. However, if you have one and want to use it on TRUBA, it may be possible to deploy it to the clusters. If this is not the case there exists excellent open-source software our experts are currently working with which can be used for the case studies. If none of these holds, although this is not applicable for some software licenses, the NCC partners may already have the necessary software license. In this case, a PoC may be developed within the premises of the partner entity. However, in any case, the license will not be used by the company after the case study. It must be provided by the company for sustainability.
- The secrecy of the data/code the company has is crucial. How can we collaborate?
- We have successful, ongoing case studies with similar concerns. For such collaborations, we use Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). If your company does not have expertise on NDAs our TTOs and law departments can help us to prepare a suitable one.
- We are a large-scale company. Is this collaboration opportunity for SMEs only?
- No. Although SMEs have priority, we are open to collaboration with your company. In fact, we have a few large-scale companies currently we are working with.
- Will this collaboration make the company a partner of the project/center?
- No. Although we will be happy if you want to share your HPC knowledge by organizing seminars, tutorial sessions, etc. during our events, the NCC structure is fixed for the first two years of the EuroCC project (until September 2022). If you want to share your expertise please fill this form.
- To initiate the case study, will we apply to a project together?
- No. The project has already been started in September 2020 and will continue until September 2022. As mentioned before, it aims to increase the awareness and competence on High-Performance Computing. The industrial case studies are designed to help the companies in Turkey to assess and satisfy their computational needs which is one of the main goals of the NCC.
- What do we need to publish after the case study, and where will we post material about the case study?
- We expect a case report to be prepared and published on our website at the end of the project. However, the firm can also post additional data and knowledge, for example, research datasets, technical reports, videos, etc., using an appropriate license under the EuroCC@Turkey community in the Turkish open-access repository Aperta. All the case study materials will be accessible from the NCC Turkey website.