SI2-SSE: Fingerprinting Scientific Codes to Verify and Create Compatible System Software Environments

SI2-SSE：指纹科学代码以验证和创建兼容的系统软件环境

• 批准号: 1148473
• 负责人: Philip Papadopoulos
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-04-01 至 2017-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1148473&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SI2; SSE; Fingerprinting; Scientific; Codes

Every computational science application requires supporting software (code libraries, data files, other programs) to run properly. However, the computer systems that complex scientific applications run on are continuously updated by administrators to add new capabilities, fix bugs, and plug security holes. These are necessary changes, but a user needs to know if "something changed in the system that will break his/her code". A similar question arises when running a code on a different computer from which it was compiled or developed: "does the new system have all the necessary support software to run my applications?" This proposal describes a plan for developing the software capability to both statically and dynamically "fingerprint" a scientific application to answer those two questions and therefore test for compatibility of new system or determine if a new update could have deleterious effects. Our proposed software system will have five major components: fingerprint format, static analysis of an application to create one type of fingerprint, a system verifier that checks if a system satisfies the needs defined in a fingerprint, dynamic analysis to find applications dependencies only detectable at run time, and a composer capability to automatically define a Rocks cluster managed system that will fulfill the requirements of a specific fingerprint. All software developed will be open-source and freely available.Nearly every person who uses a computer has seen messages similar to "new updates have been installed, you must restart your computer." Sometimes, applications break because of these updates. This proposal's broader impact is that, for a wide variety of scientific applications, we will be able to determine if a new system or an existing system is compatible by verifying the code's fingerprint. Since, scientific applications can be very sensitive to underlying software changes, it will be possible to detect incompatibility before wasting time and energy to run a large-scale application on an production systems. When these applications are used as the basis of scientific discovery, it becomes even more imperative that we view the computing environment and application together as an experimental apparatus whose configuration we need to better understand. We believe that the composer capability of this proposal can have the transformational impact by developing fully- descriptive catalogs of what an application needs to function properly. In the era in which simulation output is being used to drive policy, this kind of scientific reproducibility has impact well beyond the notions of academic completeness.

每个计算科学应用程序都需要支持软件（代码库，数据文件，其他程序）才能正常运行。然而，运行复杂科学应用程序的计算机系统不断由管理员更新，以添加新功能，修复错误并堵塞安全漏洞。这些都是必要的更改，但用户需要知道“系统中是否发生了某些更改，从而会破坏他/她的代码”。当在编译或开发代码的另一台计算机上运行代码时，会出现类似的问题：“新系统是否具有运行应用程序所需的所有支持软件？该提案描述了一项开发软件能力的计划，以静态和动态地“指纹”科学应用程序来回答这两个问题，从而测试新系统的兼容性或确定新的更新是否会产生有害影响。我们建议的软件系统将有五个主要组成部分：指纹格式、创建一种类型的指纹的应用程序的静态分析、检查系统是否满足指纹中定义的需求的系统验证器、查找仅在运行时可检测的应用程序依赖性的动态分析和一个作曲家的能力，自动定义一个岩石集群管理的系统，将满足特定的指纹的要求。几乎每个使用电脑的人都看到过类似于“新的更新已经安装，你必须重新启动你的电脑”的信息。“有时候，应用程序会因为这些更新而中断。这一提议的更广泛的影响是，对于各种各样的科学应用，我们将能够通过验证代码的指纹来确定新系统或现有系统是否兼容。由于科学应用程序可能对底层软件更改非常敏感，因此可以在浪费时间和精力在生产系统上运行大规模应用程序之前检测不兼容性。当这些应用程序被用作科学发现的基础时，我们将计算环境和应用程序一起视为实验设备变得更加迫切，我们需要更好地了解其配置。我们相信，通过开发一个应用程序正常运行所需的完整描述性目录，该提案的作曲家能力可以产生变革性的影响。在模拟输出被用来推动政策的时代，这种科学再现性的影响远远超出了学术完整性的概念。