Apostolos Giannousas

Who am I?

Hello stranger! My name is Apostolos Giannousas and I am 21 years old. I was born in Volos, Greece and I am a third year undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Thessaly. I specialize in computer engineering but I am passionate about learning all kinds of new things.

Why computer engineering?

From a young age, I was always fascinated by STEM and delved into math and physics which were my favorite subjects at the time. However, the thing that caught my attention the most was the concept of computers. The way they could perform so many complex tasks with efficiency made me curious. I needed to understand how they work and what are their limitations. As you can guess, this urged me to pursue computer engineering and it surely helped me unravel the mystery behind those sophisticated machines.

My interests and how did they lead to PRACE

In my efforts to understand computers, I became particularly interested in computer architecture and was able to obtain lots of knowledge on the topic through relevant courses. What captivated me the most, was the connection between hardware and software as well as the ways you could accelerate your software by making optimal use of the underlying hardware. Specifically, this motivated me to learn the basics of hardware design apart from programming and sparked my interest in High-Performance Computing.

Nevertheless, besides that, I was eager to go further with the concept of software acceleration. Therefore, I took the embedded systems course at my university where we were introduced to the concept of High-Level Synthesis (HLS). HLS is a design process that enables the hardware implementation of a software kernel on an FPGA, thus using it as an accelerator. During this experience, I learned about PRACE SoHPC and thought it could be the next step towards my passion for accelerating computational intensive tasks.

What was my reaction when I was selected?

Despite my excitement about my application and the possibility to get involved in PRACE, I doubted that I would be selected, especially after not receiving the acceptance email on time. At least that is what I thought until I found out that the spam folder was the culprit. I was over the moon upon realizing that I was selected and assigned my
first choice!

Which is the project I selected and why?

The project I chose is High-Performance Quantum Fields, which is organized by the JSC-Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. Now a handful of you may wonder “What exactly does this computer engineering student know about Quantum Field Theory simulations?”. Indeed you are right up to an extent because my knowledge of the concept is scarce. However, from where I stand, it is a great opportunity to learn about a fascinating physics concept and HPC simultaneously. My major ambition is to not only harness the HPC power for optimizing those simulations but to explain their significance as simply as possible in future posts.

What is my experience so far?

Although the entire internship will be remote for me, I think it will still be an unforgettable experience. This was my first week, during which we attended various training sessions that will be useful soon. The training was not only technical but also involved instructions about blogging and social media activity, which are crucial for promoting your work to the world. Last but not least, I met my project colleague Christopher Kirwan and our mentors at the end of the training week. They all seem friendly and I cannot wait to start working together.