National Computational Science Alliance Overview of the Alliance Kickoff Course in Alliance Streaming Video Series January 22, 1998

National Computational Science Alliance

Overview of the Alliance

• Kickoff Course in Alliance Streaming Video Series

• January 22, 1998


The Alliance Emerges From the NSF Supercomputing Center

• National Center for Supercomputing Applications– Unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign– Founded 1985– Becomes the Alliance Leading Edge Center

• Information and Computational Infrastructure Arises – NSFnet Develops from Center’s Backbone– Macs and PCs Hook in Using NCSA Telnet– Web Browsing Grows out of NCSA Mosaic

• Partnerships in Advanced Computational Infrastructure– New NSF Program– Two Winners: Alliance and NPACI


NSFNET 56 Kb/s Backbone (1986-8)

NCSANCSA


Infrastructure Leaves its Mark -- a Century Later

Railroads


• Leading Edge Centers– Supernodes of the Grid

• Enabling Technology Teams– Architects of the Grid

• Applications Technologies Teams– Specifications for the Grid

• Education, Outreach, and Training Teams– Content for the Grid

• Partners for Advanced Computational Services– Support for the Grid

• Industrial Partners and Strategic Vendors– Technology Transfer for the Grid

The Alliance is Prototyping the National Technology Grid


The Alliance National Technology Grid - Prototyping the 21st Century Infrastructure


NCSA Industrial Partners

• Allstate Insurance Co.

• Boeing Company

• Caterpillar Inc.

• Eastman Kodak Co.

• Eli Lilly and Company

• FMC Corporation

• Ford Motor Company

• J. P. Morgan

• Motorola, Inc.

• Phillips Petroleum Co.

• SABRE Group, Inc.

• Schlumberger

• Sears, Roebuck & Co.

• Shell Oil Company

• Tribune Company


Frontier Problems in Computational Science and Engineering

• Multidiscipline Domains

• Multiscale Interactions

• Complex Geometries

• Full-up Virtual Prototyping

• Large System Optimizations


How Application Teams Drive the Grid

• Cosmology– Multi-scale Resolution

• Environmental Hydrology– Immersive Collaboration

• Chemical Engineering– Virtual Prototyping

• Bioinformatics– Distributed Data

• Nanomaterials– Remote Microengineering

• Scientific Instruments– Virtual Observatories


Alliance Enabling Technologies Teams - Faculty Leads

• Parallel Computing (16)– Ken Kennedy, Rice U

– Greg McRae, MIT

• Distributed Computing (15)– Rick Stevens, Argonne

– Paul Woodward, U Minnesota

• Data and Collaboration (14)– Dan Reed, UIUC

– Roscoe Giles, Boston U


NSF vBNS and PACI - Mutually Interdependent

NPACI

NCSA Alliance

Both NCSA Alliance and NPACI

Other High Performance Connection sites

Current vBNS “Backbone” sites


EPSCoR --Increasing the Participation in Supercomputing, vBNS, and CAVE Technologies


The Illinois Century Network: Illinois Board of Higher Ed. Technology Task Force

•Proposal calls for the creation of a high-speed state backbone 155-622 Mbps. (Internet 2 Type speeds)

•Higher education institutions would connect at 45-155Mbps


MREN and STAR-TAP

MREN - America’s First Operational Gigapop - Midwest Sites

OC12 vBNS Indiana Hub

Indiana Univ

Purdue

Wisconsin

Minnesota/LCSE

NCSA

Michigan Hub

U Michigan Michigan State


International Connections Through STAR TAP


Exponential Cascade:From Leading Edge to Consumer Electronics

1985 Cray X-MP

Cost:$8,000,000

60,000 watts of power

No Built in Graphics

56 kbps NSFnet Backbone

1997 Nintendo 64

Cost: $149

5 watts of power

Interactive 3D Graphics

64 kbps ISDN to Home

Source: Silicon Graphics, 1997


TOP500 Systems by Vendor

TOP500 Reports: http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/top500.html

CRI

SGI

IBM

Convex

HP

SunTMC

Intel DEC

JapaneseOther

0

100

200

300

400

500Ju

n-9

3

No

v-93

Jun

-94

No

v-94

Jun

-95

No

v-95

Jun

-96

No

v-96

Jun

-97

No

v-97

Nu

mb

er

of

Sy

ste

ms

OtherJapaneseDECIntelTMCSunHPConvexIBMSGICRI

National Computational Science AllianceFuture Upgrade Under Negotiation with NSF

NCSA Combines Shared Memory Programming with Massive Parallelism

CM-5

CM-2


NCSA Quadruples its HP SPP-2000April 9, 1997

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Indices/Spotlight/Features/feature_hp.html

NCSA SPP-2000 Upgrade Plan:FY97 - 64 nodes, 16 GBFY98 - 128 nodes, 32 GB

Initial BenchmarksSPP-2000 is 2-8x faster than SPP-1200


World’s Largest Unclassified SGI / CRAY Origin 2000 - October 3, 1997

NCSA 512-Processor Origin 10/3/97


Putting a Window in the Supercomputer Oven- Coupling the vBNS to Scalable Computing

Porter, Anderson, Habermann, Ruwart, & Woodward , LCSE,Nov. 1997

Data Moved From NCSA over vBNS to U Minnesota-

Visualization at SC97 While Week Long Simulation Runs at NCSA

vBNS Gives 100-Fold Thruput Increase Over Commercial Internet!

Surface View Interior View

Evolution of a Red Giant with White Dwarf Core


Computing on the University of Wisconsin Condor Pool

Condor Cycles

CondorView, Courtesy of Miron Livny, Todd Tannenbaum(UWisc)


The PC Revolution and Supercomputing

1988-Andy Grove Prediction

1996-Sandia Intel Teraflop

Adapted from speech by Bill Gates


Alliance NT Cluster Approaches

• Fast Messaging– Andrew Chien, UIUC DCS

– High Performance Network Backplane on SMPs– Support for MPI-FM, MPI-2 put/get, global arrays

• NCSA Symbio– Briand Sanderson, UIUC NCSA– Parallel Distributed Computing Environment– DCOM / COM based over Desktops and Servers

• Treadmarks– Willy Zwaenepol, Rice CRPC– Software DSM over NT Cluster


Emergence of Large Scale Structure Using Traditional MPP Supercomputer

Source: Greg Bryan, Mike Norman, NCSA

512x512x512 Run on 512-node CM-5

Evolution Fly Thru


Use of Shared Memory Adaptive Grids -Alliance Cosmology Team

Source: Greg Bryan, Mike Norman, John Shalf, NCSA

64x64x64 Run with Seven Levels of Adaption on SGI Power Challenge,Locally Equivalent to 8192x8192x8192 Resolution


Alliance National Technology GridWorkshop and Training Facilities

Powered by Silicon GraphicsLinked by the NSF vBNS


Same CAVE Software Libraries - Different Physical Implementations

CAVE Immersadesk

Image courtesy: Electronic Visualization Laboratory, UIUC

http://evlweb.eecs.uic.edu/pape/CAVE/


Collaborative Virtual Environment -Environmental Modeling

ImmersaDesks

vBNS

DREN

SGI Onyx(NCSA)

Integrated M-Bone Videoteleconferencing

John Shalf,Polly Baker NCSA; Mike Stephens and Carl Cerco, CEWES

SGI Onyx(Old Dominion)

SGI Onyx(U. Wisc)

Coupling Chesapeake Bay Simulations and Databases

SGI Onyx (CEWES)

Vicksburg, MS


Using CAVE5D with NCSA’s Virtual Director to Analyze Chesapeake Bay Simulations

Alliance Environmental Hydrology Applications TeamGlen Wheless and Cathy Lascara,

Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, Old Dominion University

Donna Cox, Robert Patterson, Stuart Levy, NCSAVirtual Director Team

Fish Larvae at Mouth of the Bay15 Day Period

Salinity (Red-High, Yellow-Low)


Caterpillar’s Distributed Virtual Reality

Data courtesy of Valerie Lehner, NCSA, 1996


ChickScope - Networked Scientific Instruments Enables K-12

NCSA, UIUC Beckman Institute http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/


Crossing Streets: A K-12 Virtual Reality Application

81 students involved from Champaign &Urbana area. 41 developmentally disabled, 40 general students.

Goal to teach students to cross virtual streets and probe their ability to generalize this learning to actual realities.

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Edu/RSE/VR/trivr.html

Collaboration between the UIUC Transition Research Institute

& NCSA

Documents

National Computational Science Alliance Overview of the Alliance Kickoff Course in Alliance Streaming Video Series January 22, 1998