Birds of a Feather Archive

Agriculture Empowered by Supercomputing

Authors: Nicolás Erdödy (Open Parallel Ltd, Multicore World), Manish Parashar (University of Utah), Arthur Maccabe (University of Arizona, IFDC), Dhabaleswar Panda (The Ohio State University, ICICLE), Nicola Ferrier (Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)), Pete Beckman (Northwestern University), Mary-Francis LaPorte (University of Arizona)

Abstract: Agriculture worldwide is facing massive challenges in production, distribution, pollution reduction, food security, and waste: In a $4 trillion global food production industry, < 40% of any crop is actually marketed. The farm, the oldest human-engineered system, produces the vast majority of human sustenance and consumes the majority of global freshwater. Its efficient operation is crucial—particularly when supply chains are disrupted by wars and pandemics. This third BoF will continue discussing how novel supercomputing technologies, AI, and related distributed heterogeneous systems are empowering the primary sector and, as a result, stop operating in a needlessly fragile and inefficient way.

Long Description: Agriculture is a sector facing massive challenges in production, distribution, pollution reduction, and food waste: less than 40% of any crop is actually marketed and of all food produced 35%-50% is wasted. The farm, the oldest human-engineered system, produces the vast majority of human sustenance and consumes the majority of global freshwater. In an era of looming food insecurity, water shortages and environmental stresses, the farm’s efficient operation is of vital importance -particularly when supply chains are disrupted by wars and pandemics. Yet agriculture has not substantially benefited from state-of-the-art IT and related systems, and as a result continues to operate in a needlessly fragile and inefficient way. Following the very successful meetings @SC23, SC24 and ISC25 (Germany), we continue expanding our growing community. We will discuss how novel supercomputing technologies, AI and related distributed heterogeneous systems are empowering agriculture and dramatically changing its value chain and production processes. Goals *Expose the HPC community to the specific cultural and operational challenges and opportunities that the agricultural sector and related industries present today and toward the future. *Present HPC as part of a solution to complex interactions between e.g. climate change and adaptation; weather forecasting and high resolution climate models; financial and commodities markets; trade, supply chain and transportation; new algorithms and data science; plant breeding and genomics research; all intertwined with the strategic and operational decisions to be made at the farm. *Interest professionals and practitioners from the primary sector in HPC. *Through the BoF content shared online, inform end-users (farmers, corporations, governments) on how supercomputing could empower the primary sector. *Challenge technology colonisation concepts while discussing modular solutions adaptable to local conditions. Core Topics: At first glance, a network of IoT-sensors-edge computing and HPC seem opposites. However, big-data analysis, data-driven simulation and modelling, in-situ data reduction, AI/ML, and parallel programming models might tightly link thousands of very intelligent edge devices and HPC. This BoF brings together several experts in this new domain and discuss these questions: * What software technologies from large systems will be transferred to be programmed and maintained in a challenging farm environment? * Can AI/ML models for HPC be adapted for IoT/edge? * What novel, low-power hardware can be deployed in the field? * Is there room for hardware-software co-design at scale to benefit both communities? * How will agriculture systems and HPC simulations be coupled? What about remote sensing imagery applications such as crop detection and yield prediction? Relevance to SC audience * HPC experts in weather forecasting, climate modelling, complex systems simulations, biology, genetics, will find this BoF interesting. * Researchers in hardware and software, particularly in I/O, networking, communication within distributed systems, OS, AI, edge computing. * Professionals caring about power consumption, sustainability, cybersecurity, and projects that can modularly scale from a single user (e.g. individual farm) to large environments (whole catchment, state, nation-wide deployments). Background: BoFs @SC23, SC24, ISC25: an average of 90 delegates attended these sessions with active participation (15+ using the microphone during the interactive side of the session).

Website: https://openparallel.com/l2l/bof-sc25/

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