SCI: ETF Early Operations: CACR/CIT

可扩展万亿级设施（ETF）或TeraGrid涉及九个资源提供商，这些资源提供商运营高性能计算，信息和可视化设施，与专用光网络互连，并与一组通用软件集成，为用户社区提供一组有凝聚力的资源和服务。2004年10月1日，TeraGrid将结束为期三年的分布式环境建设工作，并将过渡到运行状态。 该提案概述了加州理工学院（CIT）高级计算研究中心（CACR）作为TeraGrid的一部分提供的一系列服务。CACR将通过以科学为基础的方法支持TeraGrid，重点是数据密集型应用，最初来自一小部分国家研究界，具有以下特点：o在CIT有一个强大的相关科学研究小组; o其他机构的相关科学研究小组领导人参与;和o每个都反映了NSF或其他联邦研究机构的优先方向，主要是多机构感兴趣的领域。这些领域还将共享以下技术属性：o大量的实验和/或计算数据保存在几个本地和远程异构集合中; o需要新的分析方法来从实验数据中提取信息和/或与计算建模交互; o正在努力创建统一的、可互操作的服务;社区正在建立利用和联合信息资源的持久虚拟组织。拟议的最初主要研究领域是天文学和高能物理学。 这两个领域都提供了与其他TeraGrid站点合作的机会，每个社区都有大量资金来开发特定领域的网络基础设施。CACR将协助这些团体在TeraGrid上部署和调整他们的软件，并提供支持，以促进他们的TeraGrid使用。此外，我们将开始与地球动力学建模和中子物理社区的努力。由于这些用户社区面临的问题具有共同的特点，我们预计将确定共享网络基础设施的要求。CACR将运行一个由72个双处理器节点（.8 TF）组成的Itanium 2集群。这个集群通过Myrinet和千兆以太网与DataWulf集群紧密耦合，DataWulf集群将提供大约170 TB的在线磁盘存储。 这些资源将主要用于应用程序开发以及按需和交互式计算和数据分析。 由于CACR具有集中的作用，因此它可以响应初始研究社区对按需和交互式计算和数据分析的要求。固有的灵活性将允许实验新的方法来调度，一般来说，资源管理。在过去的二十年里，CACR及其前身已经证明了与相对复杂的用户群体密切合作的能力，以探索创新的方法来支持计算科学前沿的科学家。我们建议继续这种合作模式。

The Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF), or TeraGrid, involves nine resource providers operating high-performance computing, information, and visualization facilities, interconnected with a dedicated optical network and integrated with a set of common software that presents the user community with a cohesive set of resources and services. On October 1, 2004, the TeraGrid will conclude a three-year construction effort to create this distributed environment and will transition into an operational state. This proposal outlines a set of services to be provided at the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) of the California Institute of Technology (CIT) as part of the TeraGrid. CACR will support the TeraGrid through a science-based approach focused on data-intensive applications, initially from a small set of national research communities sharing the following features: o there is a strong related scientific research group at CIT; o there is participation by leaders of related scientific research groups at other institutions; and o each reflects a priority direction for NSF or other federal research agencies, primarily multi-agency areas of interest. These areas will also share the following technical attributes: o large quantities of experimental and/or computational data are maintained in several local and remote heterogeneous collections; o there are requirements for new analysis approaches to extract information from the experimental data and/or interact with computational modeling; o there is an ongoing effort to create unified, interoperable services; and o the communities are building persistent virtual organizations that exploit and federate information resources. The proposed initial primary research communities are astronomy and high energy physics. Both areas offer opportunities for collaboration with other TeraGrid sites and each community has significant funding to develop domain specific cyberinfrastructure. CACR will assist these groups in deploying and tuning their software on the TeraGrid and provide support to facilitate their TeraGrid usage. In addition, we will initiate efforts with the geodynamics modeling and neutron physics communities. Since the problems faced by these user communities have common features, we anticipate identifying requirements for shared cyberinfrastructure. CACR will operate an Itanium2 cluster consisting of 72 dual processor nodes (.8 TF). This cluster is tightly coupled via Myrinet and Gigabit Ethernet to DataWulf clusters, which will provide approximately 170 TB of online disk storage. These resources will be utilized primarily for application development and for on-demand and interactive computation and data analysis. Because CACR has a focused role, it can be responsive to the initial research communities requirements for on-demand and interactive computation and data analysis. Inherent flexibility will allow experimentation with novel approaches to scheduling and, in general, resource management. For the past two decades, CACR and its predecessors have demonstrated an ability to work closely with relatively sophisticated user groups to explore innovative approaches to supporting scientists on the frontier of computational science. We propose to continue this mode of collaboration.