Stampede 2: Operations and Maintenance for the Next Generation of Petascale Computing

2016年，美国国家科学基金会资助德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的德克萨斯高级计算中心（TACC）收购了一个大型的新型高性能计算（HPC）系统Stampede 2。TACC将与主要系统供应商戴尔（Dell）合作，在2017年部署基于英特尔的系统，通过引入新的内存、处理器和互连技术，将Stampede的容量提高一倍。随着Stampede 2即将投入使用，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（University of Texas at Austin）提交了一份系统运营和维护（O&amp；M）提案。该系统预计每年将被数千名研究人员、教育工作者和学生用作国家资源。作为学术基础设施的重要组成部分，它将促进各种科学和工程前沿的基础知识。除了继续与戴尔合作外，克莱姆森大学、科罗拉多大学、康奈尔大学、印第安纳大学和俄亥俄州立大学的子奖励将确保学术界和工业界对创新HPC的广泛国家研究。Stampede 2将在国家研究网络基础设施（CI）的更大范围内运行。它加入了依赖并受益于nsf资助的极端科学与工程发现环境（XSEDE）项目的协作用户服务模型的大规模计算资源集。这些伴随的共享服务提供系统分配、用户培训、技术互操作性、研究和CI社区参与，以及获得专业知识。Stampede 2的计算、存储和网络容量是当前系统Stampede的两倍。发挥这一复杂科学仪器的潜力需要知识丰富和持续的操作，其中包括：强大的系统维护、可靠性和可用性；安全;软件配置与管理；有效利用;并研究工作流程优化。最重要的是，目前依赖Stampede的数千名用户依靠专家帮助开发新技能，以最大限度地发挥Stampede 2中新技术的价值。这些技术代表了大规模计算的未来。Stampede 2的架构反映了社区对HPC百亿亿级未来的共识；虽然特定的技术正在快速变化，但所有的路径都表明了向应用程序中更显式的并行性的过渡。今天的应用必须适应，Stampede 2为未来的百亿级系统提供了一座桥梁，提供了探索多尺度（时间和空间）模拟、多种形式的数据密集型科学、可视化和数据分析的新方法的能力。Stampede 2的运营还将扩大HPC的使用基础，吸引并支持比其他任何国家系统更深入和更广泛的大规模计算科学研究。Stampede 2运营和维护项目计划包括世界级的运营、用户支持和培训、应用程序调优和迁移、教育、扩展、文档、数据管理、可视化、分析驱动的应用程序支持和研究协作。TACC及其合作伙伴团队是成熟的CI提供商。Stampede 2的运营团队将利用其他nsf支持的项目，如XSEDE、高级网络基础设施研究和教育促进者（ACI-REF），以及一系列广泛的科学软件活动。有了这些互补的合作，O&amp；M奖的价值将进一步增加。

In 2016, the National Science Foundation funded the acquisition of a large new forward-looking high performance computing (HPC) system, Stampede 2, by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin. In partnership with its lead system vendor (Dell), TACC will deploy the Intel-based system in 2017, doubling the capacity of its predecessor, Stampede, by introducing new memory, processor and interconnect technologies. As Stampede 2 nears its operational deployment, a proposal for operations and maintenance (O&M) of the system was submitted by the University of Texas at Austin. The system is expected to be used as a national resource by thousands of researchers, educators, and students annually. As a critical component of academic infrastructure, it will advance fundamental knowledge in a wide variety of science and engineering frontiers. In addition to continued partnership with Dell, subawards to Clemson University, The University of Colorado, Cornell University, Indiana University, and Ohio State University will ensure a broad national research of innovative HPC to academia and industry. Stampede 2 will operate within the larger landscape of the nation's research cyberinfrastructure (CI). It joins the set of large scale computing resources that rely on and benefit from the collaborative user services model of the NSF-funded Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) project. These accompanying shared services provide for systems allocations, user training, technical interoperability, research and CI community engagement, and access to expertise. Stampede 2 doubles the computing, storage and networking capacity of the current system, Stampede. Delivering on the potential of this complex scientific instrument requires knowledgeable and ongoing operations, which include: robust system maintenance, reliability and availability; security; software configuration and management; efficient utilization; and research workflow optimization. Most significantly, the thousands of users who currently depend on Stampede rely on expert assistance to help in the development of new skills in order to maximize the value of the new technologies in Stampede 2. These technologies represent the future of large-scale computing. The architecture of Stampede 2 reflects community consensus about HPC's exascale future; while specific technologies are in rapid flux, all paths indicate a transition to more explicit parallelism within applications. Today's applications must adapt, and Stampede 2 offers a bridge to exascale systems of tomorrow, providing capabilities for exploring new approaches to multiscale (both temporal and spatial) simulations, many forms of data intensive science, visualization, and data analysis. Stampede 2's operations will also broaden the usage base of HPC, appealing to and supporting a much greater depth and breadth of large-scale computational science for research than any other national system. The Stampede 2 Operations and Maintenance project plan includes world-class operations, user support and training, application tuning and migration, education, outreach, documentation, data management, visualization, analytics-driven application support, and research collaboration. TACC and its team of partners are established CI providers. Collectively the Stampede 2 operations team will leverage a variety of other NSF-supported projects such as XSEDE, Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitators (ACI-REF), and a broad array of scientific software activities. With these complementary collaborations, the value of the O&M award is further increased.