Peta-5: A National Facility for Petascale Data Intensive Computation and Analytics

来自剑桥大学的Peta-5提案汇集了来自10个不同机构的15位世界领先的HPC系统和应用专家，领导创建突破性的HPC和数据分析能力，这将对英国的研究，工业和卫生部门产生重大的国家影响。Peta-5旨在为新的EPSRC二级高性能计算网络的建立和可持续性做出重大贡献。剑桥二级中心与其他一级、二级和三级利益相关者合作，旨在形成一个连贯、协调和富有成效的国家电子基础设施（Ne-I）生态系统。这种大大增强的计算研究支持能力将使计算和以数据为中心的研究产出显著增加，推动学术研究发现和更广泛的英国知识经济的增长。Peta-5系统将是英国EPSRC研究中最大的异构数据密集型HPC系统之一。为了在系统能力和能力方面创造临界质量，在国家层面上产生影响，剑桥大学从大学、STFC DiRAC和EPSRC Tier 2提案中汇集了资金和设备资源，创造了总资本设备价值1150万英镑；向EPSRC提出的要求是500万英镑。大学将保证支付系统自服务开始之日起4年内的所有运营费用，并将讨论是否运行第五年。剑桥将确保EPSRC资助的Peta-5项目的80%用于EPSRC的研究项目，其中65%的EPSRC资助的Peta-5项目将通过轻量级资源分配委员会免费提供给EPSRC资助的任何英国项目，15%用于剑桥EPSRC的研究，20%出售给英国工业，以推动英国知识经济。Peta-5系统将于2017年5月投入使用，届时将成为英国最强大的高性能计算系统。总的来说，Peta-5将提供3petaflops （PF）的持续性能，源自3个异构计算元素，1PF Intel X86, 1PF Intel KNL和1PF NIVIDIA Pascal GPU （Peta-1）通过Pb/s HPC结构（Peta-2）连接到极端I/O固态存储池（Peta-3）， petascale数据分析（机器学习+ Hadoop）池（Peta-4）和大型15pb分层存储解决方案（Peta-5），所有这些都在一个单一的执行环境下。这在英国创造了一种新的高性能计算能力，专门用于满足经济实惠的千万亿次模拟和数据密集型工作负载与复杂数据分析相结合的需求。正是这些特征的结合开启了新一代的计算科学研究。Peta-5服务的核心科学依据基于三个广泛的科学主题：材料科学和计算化学；计算工程与智慧城市；卫生信息学。选择这些主题是因为它们代表了EPSRC重要的研究领域，这些领域展示了Peta-5数据密集型高性能计算能力的巨大优势。这项服务对于异构计算和数据密集型科学的许多其他领域显然是有价值的。因此，包含了第四个横向主题“异构-数据密集型科学”。RAC中的初始主题分配将是：材料30%，工程30%，健康20%，异构-数据密集型20%。Peta-5设施将推动国家层面的研究发现和影响，在英国创造最大和最具成本效益的petascale HPC资源，将petascale模拟带入广泛的研究项目和英国公司。此外，Peta-5是英国首个专门为大规模机器学习和数据分析设计的高性能计算系统，结合了高性能计算和大数据领域，有望从大数据革命中释放知识和经济效益。

The Peta-5 proposal from the University of Cambridge brings together 15 world-leading HPC system and application experts from 10 different institutions to lead the creation of a breakthrough HPC and data analytics capability that will deliver significant National impact to the UK research, industry and health sectors.Peta-5 aims to make a significant contribution towards the establishment and sustainability of a new EPSRC Tier 2 HPC network. The Cambridge Tier 2 Centre working in collaboration with other Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 stakeholders aims to form a coherent, coordinated and productive National e-Infrastructure (Ne-I) ecosystem. This greatly strengthened computational research support capability will enable a significant increase in computational and data centric research outputs, driving growth in both academic research discovery and the wider UK knowledge economy. The Peta-5 system will be one of the largest heterogeneous data intensive HPC systems available to EPSRC research in the UK. In order to create the critical mass in terms of system capability and capacity needed to make an impact at National level Cambridge have pooled funding and equipment resources from the University, STFC DiRAC and this EPSRC Tier 2 proposal to create a total capital equipment value of £11.5M; the request to EPSRC is £5M. The University will guarantee to cover all operational costs of the system for 4 years from the service start date, with the option to run for a fifth year to be discussed. Cambridge will ensure that 80% of the EPSRC funded element of Peta-5 is deployed on EPSRC research projects, with 65% of the EPSRC funded element of Peta-5 being made available to any UK EPSRC funded project free of charge by use of a light weight resource allocation committee, 15% going to Cambridge EPSRC research and 20% being sold to UK industry to drive the UK knowledge economy. The Peta-5 system will be the most capable HPC system in operation in the UK when it enters service in May 2017. In total Peta-5 will provide 3 petaflops (PF) of sustained performance derived from 3 heterogeneous compute elements, 1PF Intel X86, 1PF Intel KNL and 1PF NIVIDIA Pascal GPU (Peta-1) connected via a Pb/s HPC fabric (Peta-2) to an extreme I/O solid state storage pool (Peta-3), a petascale data analytics (Machine Learning + Hadoop) pool (Peta-4) and a large 15 PB tiered storage solution (Peta-5), all under a single execution environment. This creates a new HPC capability in the UK specifically designed to meet the requirements of both affordable petascale simulation and data intensive workloads combined with complex data analytics. It is the combination of these features which unlocks a new generation of computational science research.The core science justification for the Peta-5 service is based on three broad science themes: Materials Science and Computational Chemistry; Computational Engineering and Smart Cities; Health Informatics. These themes were chosen as they represent significant EPSRC research areas, which demonstrate large benefit from the data intensive HPC capability of Peta-5. The service will clearly be valuable for many other areas of heterogeneous computing and Data Intensive science. Hence a fourth horizontal thematic of "Heterogeneous - Data Intensive Science" is included. Initial theme allocation in the RAC will be: Materials 30%, Engineering 30%, Health, 20%, Heterogeneous - Data Intensive 20%. The Peta-5 facility will drive research discovery and impact at national level, creating the largest and most cost effective petascale HPC resource in the UK, bringing petascale simulation within the reach of a wide range of research projects and UK companies. Also Peta-5 is the first UK HPC system specifically designed for large scale machine learning and data analytics, combining the areas of HPC and Big Data, promising to unlock both knowledge and economic benefit from the Big Data revolution.