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The Third International Workshop on Containers And New Orchestration Paradigms for Isolated
Environments in HPC (CANOPIE-HPC) at Supercomputing 2021

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CANOPIE-HPC is a workshop focusing on containerization, virtualization, and other methods to implement user-defined, bring-your-own, or isolated software environments. Submissions will be peer-reviewed, and accepted papers will be published in IEEE https://tc.computer.org/tchpc/ (TCHPC).

Website: https://canopie-hpc.org

Submission opens: July 9, 2021
Submission closes: September 8, 2021
Decisions: September 24, 2021
Camera ready due: October 8, 2021
Workshop date: November 14, 2021

Note: Items are due at 23:59 “anywhere on Earth” on the specified date.

PROGRAM CHAIRS

Patrick Bridges, University of New Mexico
Carlos Eduardo Arango Gutierrez, Red Hat

OVERVIEW

Technologies such as containers and virtual machines enable users to define and build their own software environments, and then run them on different resources in a portable, reproducible manner. These new workflows, with users directly participating in creating and managing isolated environments with tools are a transformational capability. In addition to greater flexibility and agility for users, other benefits include greater portability and reduced system administration costs. In particular, they make tractable a much-desired paradigm shift in software deployment, enabling an HPC application and its environment to be moved between platforms ranging from development laptops and desktops to exascale HPC systems.
There are numerous questions regarding best practices, foundational concepts, tools, and standards for using containers in HPC systems. Our goal is to promote and accelerate the adoption and impact of these new ecosystems to better address HPC use cases. This workshop serves as a key venue for presenting late-breaking research, sharing experiences and best practices, and fostering collaboration in this field.

SCOPE

The scope of this workshop is to better understand and improve user-defined, bring-your-own, isolated, and related software environments for HPC. The most well-known approaches are containers and virtualization, but anything to further these goals is welcome. Topics include research and practical experience reports in areas including but not limited to:
• Container runtimes, virtual machines, architectures, and related technologies
• Orchestration, resource management, and scheduling
• Expressive container information, including labels, build state, and other metadata
• Containers and orchestration tools for HPC infrastructure management
• Portability, reproducibility, and testing approaches in HPC
• HPC in the cloud and/or cloud in the HPC
• Hardware considerations, including GPUs, accelerators, and interconnects
• Security and trust models
• Image management, including distribution, archiving, and registries
• In-situ visualization and/or analysis
• Container-based data management approaches
• New container workflows, architectures, and applications, including hybrid traditional/non-traditional jobs, checkpoint/restart, and resource partitioning
• New interaction techniques such as web apps (Jupyter, RStudio, etc.) and DevOps

WORKSHOP FORMAT

CANOPIE-HPC will follow a relatively traditional format based on several other previously successful workshops at SC, consisting of approximately four sessions separated by breaks and lunch. We will have an introduction and welcoming remarks, technical talks, panels, a keynote, and a brief wrap-up discussion. The content of technical sessions will be driven by the curated mix of accepted submissions. In the event of a virtual SC21, CANOPIE-HPC will follow remote guidance from the SC21 organizers, with the goal of simulating an in-person workshop as closely as practical.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

The CANOPIE-HPC organizers embrace diversity and inclusion. We are committed to equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, gender identity, sexual orientation, or status as a parent, among other things. We understand that today’s workforce is more diverse than ever and that the nation’s best and brightest represent an endless variety of cultural, geographical, and educational backgrounds; life experiences; and perspectives. We welcome this because we recognize that workforce diversity, when fully leveraged, leads to the inclusion of more ideas and viewpoints, which in turn leads to more creativity and innovation. When individuals are able to bring their whole selves to work, they thrive and HPC thrives.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Accepted manuscripts will be published in IEEE https://tc.computer.org/tchpc/.

Manuscripts should use the IEEE Transactions format; https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html are available for Microsoft Word and LaTeX (though note that the IEEEtran class comes with most LaTeX installations). Manuscripts must be at least 6 pages in the IEEE Transactions format, including figures, tables, and references. There is no maximum, but writing should be concise, and manuscript length must be commensurate with contribution size.
We enthusiastically welcome original, high-quality submissions within the scope above. These may describe complete studies; work-in-progress research; position papers on controversial, emerging, or hot topics; state of the practice; or any other manuscript the authors believe should be included in the CANOPIE-HPC program. We encourage submissions from academia, industry, government, and/or any other type of institution.

Each manuscript will be assessed using peer review by program committee members (or outside reviewers, if needed) on the basis of scientific validity, impact to the field, reproducibility, inclusivity, and opportunity for useful and lively discussion at the workshop. Review will be single-masked; i.e., reviewers will know authors’ identities, but not vice versa. Authors should not anonymize their manuscripts.

In conjunction with the SC Reproducibility Initiative, submissions should be transparent as possible regarding all methods, and when appropriate, they should provide reproducibility artifacts such as reproduction instructions, source code, build recipes, and/or container images. These should be presented in a manner convenient for readers; e.g., prose instructions might fit well as an appendix in the submitted PDF, while source code or an image repository URLs could go in a footnote.

The program committee will discuss the submissions and their reviews and select the program over a video conference meeting. Submissions will be assessed as-is, with no expectation of substantive revision after peer review, though some submissions may be accepted conditional on specified changes (“shepherded”).

Submit your manuscript using the SC21 web system: https://submissions.supercomputing.org/?page=Submit&id=SC21WorkshopCANOPIEHPCSubmission&site=sc21