NUIT Tech Talk Topics in Research Computing: XSEDE and Northwestern University Campus Champions Pradeep Sivakumar pradeep-sivakumar@northwestern.edu
Contents What is XSEDE? Introduction Who uses XSEDE? Resources available High-Performance Computing Storage Visualization Allocations The Campus Champions Program Overview
Introduction XSEDE is a federated pool of scientific discovery infrastructure The most advanced, powerful and robust collection of integrated digital resources and services in the world Funded by the NSF (led by NCSA) An integrated, persistent shared computational resource Combining leadership class resources at 16 partner sites
XSEDE Partners 1 Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing 2 Indiana University 3 Jülich Supercomputing Centre 4 National Center for Atmospheric Research 5 National Center for Supercomputing Applications - University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign 6 National Institute for Computational Sciences - University of Tennessee Knoxville/Oak Ridge National Laboratory 7 Ohio Supercomputer Center - The Ohio State University 8 Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center - Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh 9 Purdue University 10 Rice University 11 San Diego Supercomputer Center - University of California San Diego 12 Shodor Education Foundation 13 Southeastern Universities Research Association 14 Texas Advanced Computing Center - The University of Texas at Austin 15 University of California Berkeley 16 University of Chicago 17 University of Virginia
XSEDE Campus Resources Locations of key HPC sites
Who Uses XSEDE? 2 billion CPU-hours allocated 1400 allocations 350 institutions 32 research domains 600 research requests per year 800 other requests 3.5B SUs requested(3.2b are research requests) 1.8B SUs awarded(1.6b are research awards)
Who Uses XSEDE? Sampling of much larger set. Many examples are new to use of advanced digital services. Range from petascale to disjoint HTC, many are data driven. XSEDE will support thousands of such projects. Earthquake Science and Civil Engineering Molecular Dynamics Nanotechnology Plant Science Storm modeling Epidemiology Particle Physics Economic analysis of phone network patterns Brain science Analysis of large cosmological simulations DNA sequencing Computational Molecular Sciences Neutron Science International Collaboration in Cosmology and Plasma Physics
High-Performance Computing Research projects that require large amounts of computing power are suitable to apply for XSEDE s HPC resources If you have an application that is developed with MPI, OpenMP, GPGPU, and hybrid programming paradigms (massively parallel code), it will scale well across many compute nodes
Available HPC Resources Stampede at Texas Advanced Computing Center Blacklight at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Gordon at San Diego Supercomputing Center Keeneland at Georgia Tech Kraken at the National Institute for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Labs Lonestar at Texas Advanced Computing Center Steele at Purdue Trestles at San Diego Supercomputing Center
Data Storage XSEDE has access to three types of storage areas: Archival storage: long term storage for large amounts of data Allocatable storage: additional storage on several stand-alone systems (available in the first quarter of 2013) Resource file-system storage: on the compute and visualization resource
Data Storage Resources SDSC Gordon, Trestles, 410 TB SSD system with fast storage NCSA Mass Storage System (MSS) 10 PB NICS HPSS 7 PB TACC Ranch 50 PB
Visualization Visualization is the means to transfer data into plots, images or animations to better understand phenomena being modeled. XSEDE offers a variety of resources for visualization Longhorn Nautilus Spur
Allocations Types and Nomenclature Startup Development/Testing/Porting/Benchmarking Education Classroom, Training Research Program (usually funded) PI POPS XRAC SU Principal Investigator Partnerships Online Proposal System XSEDE Resource Allocations Committee Service Unit = 1 Core-hour *Commonly used XSEDE proposal acronyms
Allocation Awarded One per PI (generally) 1-year duration Unused SUs are forfeited at the end of an award period Progress report required for renewal requests Add users to a grant via XSEDE User Portal Advance Submission Review Award Time to renew
Campus Champions Map Campus Champion Institutions January 2, 2013 Current Campus Champion Institutions (unclassified) 71 Current Campus Champion Institutions (EPSCoR states) 44 Current Campus Champion Institutions (Minority Serving Institutions)-- 10 Current Campus Champion Institutions (both EPSCoR and MSI) 8 Total Number of Campus Champion Institutions Overall -- 133
Campus Champions Role Provide local source of knowledge about XSEDE resources Add researchers and educators to start-up allocations for testing and development Provide information about the allocation process and aid in writing a successful XSEDE proposal Conduct training workshops about the use of XSEDE resources Be a liaison for NU s users of XSEDE to capture information on problems and challenges that need to be addressed NU s representatives Pradeep Sivakumar, Sr HPC Specialist Pascal Paschos, Sr HPC Specialist For information on resources, services, offerings contact quest-help@northwestern.edu
Training XSEDE offers training to teach users about getting started and how to maximize their productivity Classes are offered in a variety of areas including systems and software supported, parallel programming languages (MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, Scientific Python), HPC, visualization, data management, etc. Classes are mostly web-based. Online virtual training available at https://portal.xsede.org/web/xup/onlinetraining
Questions For help, advice and guidance on proposals, contact quest-help@northwestern.edu