Topics in Research Computing:

XSEDE and Northwestern University

Campus Champions

Pradeep Sivakumar pradeep-sivakumar@northwestern.edu

NUIT Tech Talk

• What is XSEDE?

– Introduction • Who uses XSEDE?

– Resources available • High-Performance Computing

• Storage

• Visualization

– Allocations

• The Campus Champions Program – Overview

Contents

• XSEDE is a federated pool of scientific discovery

infrastructure

– The most advanced, powerful and robust collection of

integrated digital resources and services in the world

– Funded by the NSF (led by NCSA)

– An integrated, persistent shared computational resource

– Combining leadership class resources at 16 partner

sites

Introduction

1 Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing

2 Indiana University

3 Jülich Supercomputing Centre

4 National Center for Atmospheric Research

5 National Center for Supercomputing Applications - University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign

6 National Institute for Computational Sciences - University of Tennessee Knoxville/Oak

Ridge National Laboratory

7 Ohio Supercomputer Center - The Ohio State University

8 Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center - Carnegie Mellon University/University of Pittsburgh

9 Purdue University

10 Rice University

11 San Diego Supercomputer Center - University of California San Diego

12 Shodor Education Foundation

13 Southeastern Universities Research Association

14 Texas Advanced Computing Center - The University of Texas at Austin

15 University of California Berkeley

16 University of Chicago

17 University of Virginia

XSEDE Partners

XSEDE Campus Resources

Locations of key HPC sites

• 2 billion CPU-hours allocated

• 1400 allocations

• 350 institutions

• 32 research domains

• 600 research requests per

year

• 800 other requests

• 3.5B SUs requested(3.2B

are research requests)

• 1.8B SUs awarded(1.6B are

research awards)

Who Uses XSEDE?

Sampling of much larger set. Many examples are new to use of

advanced digital services. Range from petascale to disjoint HTC, many

are data driven. XSEDE will support thousands of such projects.

Who Uses XSEDE?

• Earthquake Science and Civil

Engineering

• Molecular Dynamics

• Nanotechnology

• Plant Science

• Storm modeling

• Epidemiology

• Particle Physics

• Economic analysis of phone network

patterns

• Brain science

• Analysis of large cosmological

simulations

• DNA sequencing

• Computational Molecular Sciences

• Neutron Science

• International Collaboration in

Cosmology and Plasma Physics

• Research projects that require large amounts of

computing power are suitable to apply for XSEDE’s HPC

resources

• If you have an application that is developed with MPI,

OpenMP, GPGPU, and hybrid programming paradigms

(massively parallel code), it will scale well across many

compute nodes

High-Performance

Computing

• Stampede at Texas Advanced Computing Center

• Blacklight at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

• Gordon at San Diego Supercomputing Center

• Keeneland at Georgia Tech

• Kraken at the National Institute for Computational

Sciences, Oak Ridge National Labs

• Lonestar at Texas Advanced Computing Center

• Steele at Purdue

• Trestles at San Diego Supercomputing Center

Available HPC Resources

• XSEDE has access to three types of storage areas:

– Archival storage: long term storage for large amounts of data

– Allocatable storage: additional storage on several stand-alone

systems (available in the first quarter of 2013)

– Resource file-system storage: on the compute and visualization

resource

Data Storage

• SDSC Gordon, Trestles, 410 TB

– SSD system with fast storage

• NCSA Mass Storage System (MSS) – 10 PB

• NICS HPSS – 7 PB

• TACC Ranch – 50 PB

Data Storage Resources

• Visualization is the means to transfer data into plots,

images or animations to better understand phenomena

being modeled.

• XSEDE offers a variety of resources for visualization

– Longhorn

– Nautilus

– Spur

Visualization

• Startup Development/Testing/Porting/Benchmarking

• Education Classroom, Training

• Research Program (usually funded)

Allocations Types and Nomenclature

PI Principal Investigator

POPS Partnerships Online Proposal System

XRAC XSEDE Resource Allocations Committee

SU Service Unit = 1 Core-hour

*Commonly used XSEDE proposal acronyms

• One per PI (generally)

• 1-year duration

• Unused SUs are forfeited at the end of an award period

• Progress report required for renewal requests

• Add users to a grant via XSEDE User Portal

Allocation Awarded

Review Award

Advance

Time to renew Submission

Campus Champions Map

Campus Champion Institutions

January 2, 2013

Current Campus Champion Institutions (unclassified) – 71

Current Campus Champion Institutions (EPSCoR states) 44

Current Campus Champion Institutions (Minority Serving Institutions)--

10

Current Campus Champion Institutions (both EPSCoR and MSI) – 8

Total Number of Campus Champion Institutions Overall -- 133

• Role

– Provide local source of knowledge about XSEDE resources

– Add researchers and educators to start-up allocations for testing

and development

– Provide information about the allocation process and aid in writing

a successful XSEDE proposal

– Conduct training workshops about the use of XSEDE resources

– Be a liaison for NU’s users of XSEDE to capture information on

problems and challenges that need to be addressed

• NU’s representatives

– Pradeep Sivakumar, Sr HPC Specialist

– Pascal Paschos, Sr HPC Specialist

– For information on resources, services, offerings

contact quest-help@northwestern.edu

Campus Champions

• XSEDE offers training to teach users about getting started

and how to maximize their productivity

• Classes are offered in a variety of areas including

systems and software supported, parallel programming

languages (MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, Scientific Python),

HPC, visualization, data management, etc.

• Classes are mostly web-based. Online virtual training

available at https://portal.xsede.org/web/xup/online-

training

Training

For help, advice and guidance on proposals,

contact quest-help@northwestern.edu

Questions