Acquisition of a High Performance Computing Cluster for Solar and High-Energy Astrophysics Research

这是一项收购高性能计算集群(HPCC)的提案，以促进阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校(UAH)的太阳物理、日地物理、高能天体物理和天体物理仪器开发的研究。拟议的设施将包括一个高性能计算引擎、数据存储和存档硬件，以及可视化硬件和软件。目标是开发一个重要的设施，供参与研究小组的资深科学家、博士后和研究生免费使用。具体地说，建议的HPCC将通过加强对太阳和天体物理过程的模拟和建模的努力，促进来自多个实验计划的大量数据集的分析，并通过提供用于生成具有高统计量的仪器模拟的平台来帮助表征现有的(和未来的)仪器，来支持建议者的主要科学目标。建议书概述了一个实现这些目标的模型系统，该模型系统包括基于商用设备的多CPU设计，CPU之间的高速互连，大数据存储能力，存档硬件和软件，数据分析和可视化硬件和软件，以及面向学生和博士后的软件开发工作站。以及正在进行的和未来的分析的复杂性，构成了重大的数据分析挑战。这些因素有可能严重限制数据处理吞吐量、仪器特性研究和理论建模程序。对计算资源的适度投资将对华威大学现有和未来研究计划的科学回报产生重大影响。拟议的HPCC系统旨在解决这些问题，并提供一种资源，确保华南大学在太阳和宇宙研究方面继续处于领先地位。这一新的计算基础设施还将通过实现对在该实验室开发的仪器的模拟、设计、校准和分析，来补充UAH新成立的高能光子学实验室(HEPL)正在进行的努力。

This is a proposal to acquire a High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) to facilitate the study of solar physics, solar-terrestrial physics, high-energy astrophysics, and astrophysics instrumentation development at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). The proposed facility would consist of a high-performance computational engine, data storage, and archiving hardware, as well as visualization hardware and software. The goal would be to develop a significant facility that is freely available to senior scientists, postdocs, and graduate students in the participating research groups. Specifically, the proposed HPCC would support the proposers' primary science goals by enhancing efforts to simulate and model solar and astrophysical processes, facilitating the analysis of large volume datasets from multiple experimental programs, and aiding the characterization of existing (and the development of future) instrumentation by providing a platform for generating instrument simulations with high statistics.The proposers have outlined a model system to achieve these goals that includes a multi-CPU design based on commercially available equipment, high-speed interconnects between CPUs, large data storage capability, archiving hardware and software, data analysis and visualization hardware and software, and software development workstations for students and postdocs.The increasing volumes of experimental data, as well as the complexity of ongoing and future analyses, pose significant data analysis challenges. These factors have the potential to severely restrict data processing throughput, instrument characterization studies, and theoretical modeling programs. A modest investment in computing resources would make a major impact on the scientific return of both existing and future research programs at UAH. The proposed HPCC system is designed to address these issues and to provide a resource that would ensure UAH's continued leadership in the study of the Sun and the Cosmos. This new computational infrastructure would also complement the ongoing efforts of UAH's newly established High Energy Photonics Laboratory (HEPL) by enabling the simulation, design, calibration, and analysis of instrumentation developed in that laboratory.