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XSEDE Overview (March 2014)
1. March 20, 2014
XSEDE: A Digital Ecosystem Enhancing
Productivity for All Science & Engineering
John Towns
PI and Project Director, XSEDE
Director, Collaborative Cyberinfrastructure Programs, NCSA
jtowns@ncsa.illinois.edu
2. License terms
⢠Please cite as: Towns, John. XSEDE: A Digital Ecosystem Enhancing
Productivity for All Science & Engineering, March 2014,
[http://www.slideshare.net/jtownsil/xsede-overview-march2014]
⢠ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7961-2277
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note, the contents of this presentation are Š by the Board of Trustees of
University of Illinois. This content is released under the Creative Commons
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4. Motivation for XSEDE:
⢠Scientific advancement across multiple disciplines
requires a variety of resources and services
⢠XSEDE is about increased productivity of the
community and providing expanded capabilities
â leads to more science
â is sometimes the difference between a feasible project
and an impractical one
â lowers barriers to adoption
⢠XSEDE provides a comprehensive eScience
infrastructure composed of expertly managed and
evolving advanced heterogeneous digital resources and
services integrated into a general-purpose
infrastructure
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5. Boundary Conditions and Principles for XSEDE
⢠XSEDE inherited TeraGrid environment
⢠XSEDE inherited TG community and their expectations
⢠Point of view has changed
â not an HPC/CS/tech play
â about productivity and creating the environment necessary to be
productive
⢠focus on the success of researchers!
⢠Finally figured out that the project must define a solution that is
designed to evolve!
â technologically and organizationally!
⢠Identify the greatest needs and start there
â Donât forget what you have learned â both good and bad!
⢠Oh yea⌠the researchers donât care about your existence (per se)
â they care about access to resources, services and support
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6. XSEDE â accelerating scientific discovery
⢠XSEDEâs Vision:
a world of digitally enabled researchers,
engineers, and scholars participating in
multidisciplinary collaborations to tackle societyâs
grand challenges
⢠XSEDEâs Mission:
to substantially enhance the productivity of a
growing community of researchers, engineers,
and scholars through access to advanced digital
services that support open research
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7. XSEDEâs Strategic Goals
⢠Deepen and extend the use of the advanced digital research
services ecosystem
â deepen use by existing researchers, engineers, and scholars
â extend use to new communities
â prepare the current and next generation via education, training, and
outreach
â raise the general awareness of the value of advanced digital services
⢠Advance the advanced digital research services ecosystem
â create an open and evolving e-infrastructure
â enhance the array of technical expertise and support services offered
⢠Sustain the advanced digital research services ecosystem
â assure and maintain a reliable and secure infrastructure
â provide excellent user support services
â operate an effective and innovative virtual organization
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8. What is XSEDE?
⢠An ecosystem of advanced digital services accelerating
scientific discovery
â support a growing portfolio of resources and services
⢠advanced computing, high-end visualization, data analysis, and
other resources and services
⢠interoperability with other infrastructures
⢠A virtual organization (partnership!) providing
â dynamic distributed infrastructure
â support services, and technical expertise to enable
researchers engineers and scholars
⢠addressing the most important and challenging problems facing
the nation and world
⢠A project funded by the National Science Foundation
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9. XSEDE Factoids: high order bits
⢠5 year, US$121M project
â plus US$9M, 5 year Technology Investigation Service
⢠separate award from NSF
â option for additional 5 years of funding upon major review after
PY3
⢠No funding for major hardware
â coordination, support and creating a national/international
cyberinfrastructure
â coordinate allocations, support, training and documentation for
>$100M of concurrent project awards from NSF
⢠~140 FTE /~250 individuals funded across 20 partner
institutions
â this requires solid partnering!
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10. Total Research Funding Supported by XSEDE
in CY2013
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US$750 million in research
supported by XSEDE
in CY2013
11. Innovation: proactively looking to expand
scope of capabilities
⢠Striking a balance between providing stable, reliable
services and fostering innovation
â both in what we are doing and how we do it
⢠Campus Bridging use cases are mostly for capabilities
we have not traditionally supported
⢠Novel and Innovative Projects team is seeking out new
communities and identifying new capabilities
necessary to support them
⢠Architecture design processes explicitly support
innovation by the project
â more importantly, facilitate innovation by the community
Our goal is to deliver new capabilities â and thus new science â faster
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12. Convenience requirements will always increase
Each generation of users
requires more convenience
than the former: thus we must
always be adding new layers of
software while maintaining and
extending existing reliability
and capability.
Change is the only Constant
â Heraclitis 535BC-475BC
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No, his mind is not for rent
To any god or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent,
He knows changes aren't permanent,
But change is.
â Rush - Tom Sawyer
13. What do you mean by âAdvanced Digital
Services?â
⢠Often use the terms âresourcesâ and âservicesâ
â these should be interpreted very broadly
â most are likely not operated by XSEDE
⢠Examples of resources
â compute engines: HPC, HTC (high throughput computing), campus,
departmental, research group, project, âŚ
â data: simulation output, input files, instrument data, repositories, public
databases, private databases, âŚ
â instruments: telescopes, beam lines, sensor nets, shake tables, microscopes, âŚ
â infrastructure: local networks, wide-area networks, âŚ
⢠Examples of services
â collaboration: wikis, forums, telepresence, âŚ
â data: data transport, data management, sharing, curation, provenance, âŚ
â access/used: authentication, authorization, accounting, âŚ
â coordination: meta-queuing, âŚ
â support: helpdesk, consulting, ECSS, training, âŚ
â And many more: education, outreach, community building, âŚ
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14. Some Unexpected Challenges:
XSEDE is a socio-technical ecosystem
⢠Highly distributed organization
â challenges in managing a project that involves
staff at 20 partner institutions
⢠A completely virtual organization
â breaking new ground from an organizational
structure and management point of view
⢠Highly distributed engineering project
â developing new methodologies to adapt
traditional practices to the unusual context of
XSEDE
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15. XSEDE offers access to a variety of
resources
⢠Leading-edge distributed memory systems
⢠Very large shared memory systems
⢠High throughput systems, including Open
Science Grid (OSG)
⢠Visualization engines
⢠Accelerators like GPUs and Xeon PHIs
Many scientific problems have components that
call for use of more than one architecture.
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16. XSEDE User Portal: THE User Site
portal.xsede.org
⢠XSEDE User Portal (XUP) is designed to be the only site
a user needs to use XSEDE
⢠XUP presents information relevant to users
â user info is easier to find
â XUP also provides dynamic data about XSEDE systems
â capabilities to manage usage, files, data
⢠As a user you can
â request an allocation, and manage allocations
â sign up for training
â request help
â manage file and data, and much more!
â Portal provides single sign-on to all XSEDE resources
17. XSEDE offers more in-depth support
Extended Collaborative Support Service
⢠Support people who understand the discipline as
well as the systems (perhaps more than one support
person working with a project).
⢠37 FTEs, spread over >70 people at more than half a
dozen sites.
⢠Distributed support
â Easier to find the right expert for the project
â allows us to cover many more disciplines than if every site
had to staff the common applications.
â support does not have to move with platform change
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19. Current XSEDE Visualization and Data
Resources
⢠Visualization
â Longhorn @ TACC
⢠20.7 TF Dell/NVIDIA
cluster
⢠18.7 TB disk
⢠Storage
â Ranch @ TACC
⢠40 PB tape
â HPSS @ NICS
⢠12 PB tape
â Data Supercell @ PSC
⢠4 PB disk
â Data Oasis @ SDSC
⢠4 PB tape
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https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/
resource-monitor#advanced_vis_systems https://www.xsede.org/web/xup/
resource-monitor#storage_systems
20. Approach to Other Infrastructures:
Active Interactions
⢠OSG is a significant CI in the US â Level 2 Service Provider in XSEDE
â the nationâs premier high-throughput computing infrastructure
⢠complement traditional HPC resources inherited from TeraGrid
â ties to CI (eScience infrastructure) providers internationally
⢠PRACE is a significant HPC CI in Europe
â PRACE represents both large scale HPC and distributed resources
⢠subsumed DEISA in 2011
â joint Summer School series
â working on joint call for collaborations support later this calendar year
⢠EGI is a significant HTC CI in Europe
â initiating organizational benchmarking effort
â identifying collaborating research teams spanning XSEDE-EGI
⢠HPC Wales
â Champions programs, Science Gateways
â training content
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21. Objectives for Coming Year+
Accelerating the realization of the XSEDE vision
⢠Deliver new or improved software, services and capabilities on a
regular basis
â XSEDE Wide Area Filesystem; Global Federated Filesystem; enhanced
single sign-on; science gateway APIs; Canonical Use Case components
⢠Campus Bridging will promote "XSEDE Compatible" cluster build tools
and use of Globus Online and GFFS for data movement and access
⢠Incorporate the third cadre of under-represented students into the
XSEDE Scholars program
⢠Expand Champions Program to include Regional, Student, and Domain
Champions
⢠Redesign and implement a new allocations request system
⢠Complete baseline architecture and expanded set of defined Use
Cases
⢠Develop joint activities with industry
⢠Further develop relationships with other resource, service and
infrastructure providers
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