A Glimpse of NCSA’s Role in Support of Research Radha Nandkumar Program Director, International Affiliations & Campus Relations National Center for Supercomputing Applications radha@ncsa.uiuc.edu U.S.- South America Workshop: Mechanics and Advanced Materials – Research and Education August 2-6, 2004 National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Begin with Thanks • Organizers – Profs. Borges, Dumont, Espinosa, Paulino, and Rochinha – For the invitation – Regular engagements – Making everyone feel welcome, special, and important • NSF – Vision, encouragement and funding • Other Brazilian Collaborators – Bruno Schulze, LNCC – Vinod Robello and Christina Maria Boeres - UFF – for their invitations, hosting the visit, and for several of their visits to NCSA to seal our collaborations. • Brazilian Colleagues and Community – Hospitality and warmth • Other particiapnts in this workshop for interactions and continued discussions • Added bonus and a sign of success - Events such as this workshop are also enabling newer collaborations “between” U.S. researchers National Center for Supercomputing Applications
A little bit about myself • Professional preparation – Nearly 2 decades of experience in HPC and computational science (NCSA); among the staff since inception! – Completed recently (May ’02) an Executive MBA – Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign • Condensed Matter Physics in Astrophysical Systems (neutron stars) – Thesis Advisor – Prof. David Pines – Observational X-ray Astronomy (in India) and Cosmic ray physics (Univ. of Chicago) prior to the above. • Current Activities – Enabling International partnerships and collaborations for NCSA – Enabling and monitoring interdisciplinary computational science research at NCSA National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Presentation Outline • Introduction to NCSA • Partnerships • Recent Changes &Trends • Computing Infrastructure • Software Infrastructure • Sample Applications National Center for Supercomputing Applications
National Center for Supercomputing Applications • NCSA – a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – a U.S. NSF HPC center started in 1985 with international collaboration, in its 19 th year • federal, state, university, and industry funded – Transition from SCC & HPCC (12 yrs) to PACI Center (7 yrs) to SCI Center (soon) – a globally recognized leader in HEC and computational science, scientific visualizations, innovative software • Mission – providing access to leading computing and information technologies • universities and industry National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Strength of Innovation NCSA Telnet Mosaic Scientific Visualizations Virtual Director HDF, D2K, Open source software, CAVElib “In-a-Box” Software Suite Grid in a Box => NMI High End Computing Center – #4 in Top500 LES for Alliance and the TeraGrid National Center for Supercomputing Applications
NCSA Personnel in a nutshell • Current Direction & Vision – Rob Pennington, Acting Interim Director – Danny Powell, Executive Director • Past Directors Founding Director – Prof. Larry Smarr (now in SD) Second Director – Prof. Daniel Reed (now at NC) • A well-known and innovative organization – 280 FTEs and more than 130 students in 8 buildings, – awaiting the completion of a new building that will house most of us. • New Director search is nearing completion National Center for Supercomputing Applications
NCSA Satellite Facilities Alliance Center for Collaboration, Technology, Research, Education, Education, Science, and Software and Commercialization Center Arlington, VA Suburban Chicago National Center for Supercomputing Applications
NCSA Private Sector Partners • Current/recent partners • Previous participants – Allstate Insurance – Amoco – American Airlines – Boeing – Dow Chemical – Caterpillar – Eli Lilly – Eastman Kodak – FMC – J. P. Morgan – Kellogg – Motorola – Phillips Petroleum – Schlumberger – Sears – Shell Oil – Tribune Company – United Technologies Corp. National Center for Supercomputing Applications
International Affiliations • NCSA’s Affiliates – COPPE, Brazil (RSN) – LNCC, Brazil (Most recent) – APAC, Australia – CCLRC, UK – KISTI, Korea – Kurchatov Institute, Russia – NCHC, Taiwan – NCSA is a member of PRAGMA – CDAC, India (in discussion) – BII, Singapore (in progress) National Center for Supercomputing Applications
History and Pathways to Brazil • First visit -- NSF/U.S.- Brazilian Collaboration - August, 2002 – Talks on NCSA in multiple locations in Brazil – COPPE, FAPERJ, USP, UBrasilia etc. • Visit to NCSA by LNCC faculty – November 2002 – Bruno Schulze, Leon Sinay • ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference 2003 – Rio, June, 2003 • NSF/U.S.- Brazilian Collaboration Workshop on Advanced Materials - June, 2003 • Discussions on MOA with COPPE started in July 2003 – Prof. Rochinha and Prof. Coutinho • Discussions on MOA with LNCC – August 2003 – Prof. Marco Raupp, Prof. Bruno Schulze • Visit to NCSA by COPPE faculty –August 2003 – Prof. Rochinha • Visit to NCSA by USP faculty, October 2003 – Prof. Tereza Christina Carvalho • MOA between NCSA and LNCC – December 2003 • Invitation to NCSA Staff for the LNCC Workshop on Grid Computing – Highlighted NCSA-LNCC MOA – February 2-5, 2004 – Half a dozen NCSA/UIUC members participated in the workshop + our AU Affiliate • NSF/U.S.- Brazilian Collaboration Workshop on Advanced Materials - August 2004 • MOA between NCSA and COPPE – Expected to be completed in August 2004 • LNCC Computational Science Workshop and Mini-symposium – next week -August 2004 • Middleware workshop in conjunction with the Middleware Conference – October 2004 National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Recent Trends and Transitions • New Program – Recent CISE reorganization – PACI Program sunset; New SCI Program at NSF • NCSA’s new directions – Cyberinfrastructure in support of research, a new imperative • New modalities – Coopetition to cooperation – NCSA & SDSC - maintain our uniqueness and also work together • Building Stronger Affiliations National Center for Supercomputing Applications
International collaborations outlook “The National Science Foundation should establish and lead a large-scale interagency, and internationally coordinated Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Program (ACP) to create, deploy and apply cyberinfrastructure in ways that radically empower all scientific and engineering research and allied education.” -- NSF’s Blue Ribbon Panel /Atkin’s Report ACP => Shared CyberInfrastructure Program National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Cyberenvironments Specific A cyberenvironment is a subset of general CI capabilities and functionality that is designed and built to meet the needs of a particular community. It includes use of broadly used middleware and networks as well a community specific facilities, software frameworks, networks, and people. It is a persistent, robust, and supported capability. National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Our core expertise • Development & Deployment of Cyberinfrastructure – Computing & Grid Infrastructure – Capability and Capacity Computing – Middleware Development and Deployment • Access to these environments for empowerment of science and user communities – Enabling breakthrough scientific discoveries – Increasing knowledge and understanding • Community engagement – Nationally and internationally – Education, Outreach, and Training • Building successful collaborations – To pursue all of the above National Center for Supercomputing Applications
NCSA focus in Cyberinfrastructure Stable, robust and supported cyberenvironments for scientific research and communities • Community engagement to determine requirements • Science drivers to make sure that the requirements are implemented correctly • R&D if/as necessary to do the development for the requirements • Integration into the production environment • Continuing support plan of the products National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Active Collaborations => Cyberinfrastructure • Support the effective use of the extant resources by applications scientists and educators – Example: analysis of large complex datasets utilizing on-demand and interactive resources to enable data to knowledge results • Coordinated activities aimed at creating a national cyberinfrastructure – Partnerships and joint projects such as TeraGrid, NCSA/SDSC collaborations, NMI, NEESgrid, … • Encourage and actively participate in interdisciplinary collaborations National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Recommend
More recommend
