Ignacio Encinas Rubio

whoami

My name is Ignacio Encinas Rubio, and this year I completed the Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Alicante, my hometown. High performance computing has always interested me in the broad sense, either from a software perspective, a hardware perspective or their interaction. Next September I will start a master’s degree in high performance computing at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia that is taught in collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

Apart from that, I enjoy playing around with Linux (I use arch by the way), watching Formula 1 and playing videogames.

history

My background in high performance computing mainly comes from my collaboration with the research group gCAPyP where I got to implement a filtering method for CT images with C++ and accelerated it using OpenMP and MPI. It was a nice introduction to the field, where I also got to familiarize myself with working with a cluster. I complemented this formation with some online courses offered by PRACE.

My Summer of HPC

I have known the programme for some time, but waited until I had some previous experience in order to make the most out of it. After wondering many times about whether I should apply or not, doubting if I would get accepted. If you feel you would enjoy this programme I strongly recommend you to apply. Many people work very hard organizing this and I’m sure it will be a great experience.

Chitchat, Gossip & Chatter

Chitchat, Gossip & Chatter, – How to efficiently deal with communication is the project I will be working on this summer along with Ersel Hengirmen. When looking at the avaliable projects for this year I immediately knew this would be my first choice. I felt the contents suited me very much as I enjoy programming in C++, performance optimizations and had previously worked with MPI. They even got right the part about making beautiful diagrams with TikZ! (although I spend much more time on them that I would be willing to admit). At first I was unsure if I strictly met some requirements so I got in touch with the project mentor and he happily addressed my questions.

To be more specific, the project consists on performance tuning an implementation of the Fast Multipole Method which enables the simulation of N-body systems that would be impossible with the naive approach. We will work towards understanding the overhead that MPI communication introduces and reduce it as much as possible. If you’re still unimpressed about it (hope not!) let me tell you that this will be done in the Jülich Supercomputing Centre and we’ll hopefully get to play with their amazing tooling.

What about you?

If you’re reading this there is a chance you’re a student considering applying for next editions. Again, I would like to encourage you to do it. Also, feel free to reach me by email at ignacioencinasrubio@gmail.com. If you have any questions or comments regarding programme feel free to drop a comment, I’ll happily answer them!