TeraGrid

Steve Meacham National Science Foundation Mar 25, 2008

What is the TeraGrid project?

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It is an effort: To ensure that researchers and educators have access to high-end digital resources, beyond the ability of most individual universities, departments or research projects to provide To simplify access to and use of such resources to the greatest extent possible To provide training and help from expert consultants to assist researchers and educators to get the most from TeraGrid resources

What are some of the ways TG goes about this?

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By providing access to up-to-date, large-scale facilities for computation, data storage and management, and data analysis, including visualization By providing a diverse portfolio of resources By endeavoring to harmonize the user environments around the different resources and by making it possible to move more readily between resources By providing tools and mechanisms for researchers to combine the use of multiple resources in one or more locations, e.g. through use of workflow orchestration tools By providing support for communities to simplify use of these complex resources by providing purpose-built tools and tailored user environments through science gateways

What are some of the ways TG goes about this?

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By providing tools to facilitate collaboration between researchers in different locations and with different areas of specialized knowledge in order to tackle increasingly complex, cross-disciplinary research projects By providing an increasing range of allocation and usage models to cater to the increasingly diverse ways researchers want to use high-end resources (e.g. scheduled computing, urgent computing, interactive computing, working with real time data streams and new observing systems, …) By providing a great depth of consulting and user support By providing training and outreach to both experienced and inexperienced users and potential users.

TeraGrid is intended to be a dynamic project

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The needs of researchers are continuously changing TeraGrid itself is continuously adapting to meet those needs It draws from promising technological innovations and integrates those that can significantly foster science and engineering research into the TeraGrid services.

It is a collaborative, ongoing, project, funded by a portfolio of awards that are refreshed in various ways at various times. The durations of these awards are staggered to help maintain continuity and to enable the TeraGrid project as a whole to continuously adapt to emerging opportunities and changing needs.

Funding and Oversight

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Funded by OCI’s High-End Computing program. Includes all of the existing high-end computational capacity supported by NSF except for:

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NCAR, mostly supported by the Geosciences Directorate However, TeraGrid, is much more than a collection of supercomputers. It is a diverse portfolio of human, software and hardware infrastructure to support research and education.

Not the only NSF-funded computational grid

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E.g. Open Science Grid - primarily supported through a partnership between Physics Division and Office of Science.

TeraGrid Budget Profile

New supercomputing systems Integration and coordination Operations, Maintenance, User Support, Training, Outreach FY07 23.2% > 8.0% <68.7% FY08 22.5% >11.4% <66.1%

HPC Acquisitions (Track 2 class)

FY00 FY01 … FY06 FY07 FY08 FY09 >$60M >$60M $30M $30M $30M <$30M FY10 $0

User-centric: requirements, feedback

• TeraGrid Science Advisory Board

• TeraGrid Futures Project • Role for CASC?

• Expand user involvement in TG management

What is the TeraGrid Science Advisory Board?

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Meets semi-annually to provide advice to TeraGrid and to the program that manages the TG project (NSF’s HPC program) Advises on opportunities for the TG to better enable research and education in science and engineering Focuses on current and emerging types of science and engineering that are or will be dependent on access to the high-end facilities that TeraGrid provides Looks both nationally and internationally For example, what are the emerging challenges in science and engineering research, nationally and internationally, that require high-end, compute-intensive and/or data-intensive facilities and what are the opportunities for strengthening the TeraGrid’s ability to support these?

Maintains a high-level view that concentrates on the frontiers of research and education

User-centric: requirements, feedback

• TeraGrid Science Advisory Board

• TeraGrid Futures Project

• Role for CASC?

• Expand user involvement in TG management

The TeraGrid Planning Process

Buddy Bland

ORNL National Center for Computational Sciences

Univ. of Tenn.

National Institute for Computational Sciences

Edward Seidel

LSU Center for Computation and Technology

SC ’07 - November 14, 2007

Purpose of the BOF

• • Provide information on the planning process for the future TeraGrid

Solicit your input into the process

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TeraGrid Planning Process

• NSF is providing support for a planning process that is – anticipating change – community-driven & participatory – centered on user requirements • Planning Process Leadership – Steering Committee drawn from key stakeholder communities 13

Primary Goal and Outcome

• The goal of the planning process is –

to develop options for delivering

TeraGrid resources and services for 2010 & beyond –

based on the diverse needs

and engineering communities of science • Final product = report to NSF & stakeholders (target due date: April 2008) 14

Timeline and Activities

• Invitational planning workshops (summer 2007) – TeraGrid Science Gateways (June 2007) – Two user workshops (August 2007) • Steering Committee formation (fall 2007) • Information gathering and stakeholder engagement (fall 2007 – spring 2008) • Preliminary report (target = February 2008) • Stakeholder feedback (March 2008) • Final report (target= April 2008) 15

Steering Committee

Chair, Timothy Killeen Director, National Center for Atmospheric Research Associate Chair, Roberta Balstad Senior Fellow, Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network

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Steering Committee

Buddy Bland ORNL UT Roscoe Giles Boston U.

Myron Gutmann Michigan Wendy Huntoon PSC Gerhard Klimeck Purdue Paul Messina CalTech ANL Monte Pettitt Houston Ed Seidel LSU Joan-Emma Shea UCSB Alex Szalay Johns Hopkins Dane Skow ANL TeraGrid

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Steering Committee Charge

• Provide a report to NSF and stakeholders that identifies options for the – definition, – design, and – implementation of the next generation of the NSF TeraGrid program – over the time frame 2010-2015 18

Planning Process Facilitation

• Univ. of Michigan School of Information – Provides support at all levels • Data collection and requirements analysis • Logistics &Outreach – Personnel • Ann Zimmerman & Tom Finholt, PI & Co-PI • Katherine Lawrence, Community engagement • Becky O’Brien, Administrative support • Cheng-Lun Li, Interactive web site 19

Further Information and Opportunities for Participation

TeraGridFuture.org

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TeraGridFuture.org

• Details of the planning process • Information about upcoming events • Opportunities for user input throughout the planning process • A venue for interacting with other people in the TeraGrid community 21

How can we gather your input?

• Brief (up to 3 page) position papers addressing one or more of these questions – Submit these via e-mail to Ann Zimmerman at

[email protected]

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DEADLINE: January 4, 2008

• Discussion or e-mail with Steering Committee Members • Discussion during our remaining time 22

Critical Issues to be Considered:

• Key lessons learned in initial stages of the TeraGrid implementation • Purpose, goals, and objectives for follow-on activities • Technical Architecture • Extensibility, scalability, criteria for inclusion, and boundaries • User support and services • Governance, including the appropriate role for users in decision-making • Modes of NSF support • Relation to and coordination with other cyberinfrastructure efforts, both nationally and internationally • Appropriate balance between operations and R&D 23

Feedback from CASC

• How to help users bridge campus and TG resources?

• Key brokers in HPC education program?

• Science and engineering opportunities • TeraGrid future design • Others?