Quantum news
- Agreement with CERN to use IBM resources expires on May 14th and will NOT be extended
- issues with CERN procurement office, tender needed, timescale 2024 Q4
- on the positive side, bidders might offer portfolio of computing platforms, e.g.
- Microsoft Azure quantum: Pasqal, Rigetti, IonQ, Quantinuum
- Amazon Braket AWS: OQC, rigetti, QuEra, IonQ
- INFN users have been informed, no strong reactions so far
- Got in touch with IBM Italia
- possibility to get an (extensible) 1-year access to a "quarter-queue slot" (~550 mins per month)
- this slot roughly matches the usage we had in the past two years
- cost: 320kEUR for one year (2x what we paid until now; we shared with IIT...)
- we can decide to become "hub" and re-sell services to other institutions
- in that case, we should buy a queue slot, cost x4
- ...perhaps something for ICSC to consider?
- given the cost, we need to justify very well the sole supplier ("affidamento diretto")
- Non-sequitur to QuEra talks
- not enough critical mass
- cost in the same ballpark (300k$ for one year)
- Recent (March 14th) discussion with Intel
- interesting platform for simulation, C++-based, MPI-ready, GPU-ready
- not many libraries available, they are clearly behind
- no access to hardware resources (working on quantum dots)
- to be continued...
- nVIDIA is the new kid on the block
EGI Task Force on Financial Contributions
Purpose
The task force is tasked to review the adequacy of the current financial contributions due by EGI Council participants according to the EGI Foundation statutes and provide recommendations to the Council for improvements and adjustments.
Components
- Volker Guelzow (DESY, Chair), CB (INFN), Magchiel Bijsterbosch (SURF), Miroslav Ruda (CESNET), Ian Collier (STFC), Matthias Schramm (TU Wien), Kostas Koumantaros (GRNET), Maria Girone (CERN), Sabine Crépé (CNRS/IN2P3), Tiziana Ferrari (EGI, ex-officio), Sergio Andreozzi (EGI, ex-officio), Gergely Sipos (EGI, ex-officio), Tanya Gabzovska (EGI, ex-officio)
Meetings
- 29th Jan, 5th Feb, 19th Feb, 26th Feb, 18th Mar
Status
- Drafting a report; to be finalised in view of the next EGI council meeting on May 22-23 (during INFN computing workshop!)
- EGI Foundation Core
- main activities: core strategy and innovation management, stakeholder management, communications and events, EGI infrastructure and EGI core management, project portfolio management, finance&admin, HR & staff management)
- EGI Federation Core
- provided services:
- Security policies for the federation members, advisories, CSIRT, software vulnerability assessment, training
- EGI e-Infrastructure proxy/Check-in
- Federated cloud enabling tools
- Federated helpdesk/GGUS
- Usage accounting/APEL
- Configuration management/GOCDB
- Operations tools
- Validated software management and distribution
- Mailing lists, indico, JIRA, document server etc.
- Main recommendations:
- The Task Force recommends a 25% increase of the annual financial contributions.
- fees have not increased since 2014; cumulative inflation in EU: ~34%
- The Task Force recommends the implementation of a revision every three years of fees based on inflation.
- The Task Force agrees to recommend the Council to adopt access fees for federated organisations not part of existing Council members.
- Long discussion on whether access fees should be paid by existing Council members; a proposal based on number of services in GOC was made
- The TF supports the recommendation to evolve the EGI Foundation legal framework towards ERIC or EDIC.
- Work in progress
- The destination of the Council fees have not been discussed, it should be a global budget that supports both EGI Foundation and EGI Federation Core. The principles of the split are not articulated well in the current proposal.
