Tech-X Corporation for CCA Overview Tech-X Corporation is an entrepreneurial and dynamic enterprise committed to scientific and technical excellence and

Tech-X Corporation for CCA

Overview

Tech-X Corporation is an entrepreneurial and dynamic enterprise committed to

scientific and technical excellence and innovation. We provide technical solutions

through collaboration and product development. Our people participate in and are dedicated to advances in science and

engineering.

CCA forum July 27,20062

Tech-X Corporation Origins

• Founded in 1994 by:– John R. Cary, CEO and Professor of Physics at the University

of Colorado– Svetlana Shasharina, Ph.D. and Vice-President of Distributed

Technologies

• Headquarters in Boulder, Colorado

• Employee-owned

• 36 employees (25 holding a Ph.D.) with physics and computer science expertise. Plus 3 next month.


Boulder is a good place


Employee Expertise

Scientific Computation• Particle accelerator modelling• Computational electromagnetics• Fusion plasma modelling

Infrastructure for Scientific Computation and Data Management

• Middleware — grid technologies, Web Services, data integration, 4GL bridges, CORBA. Components (CCA and CCM)

• High-performance computing — MPI, cluster computing• Visualization — graphical user interfaces for scientific software,

remote visualization of large datasets generated at remote clusters and supercomputers


Software Products

• A plasma and beam simulation application with interactive control and feedback

– Direct sales through Tech-X; education, research and industry pricing and licensing available

• Versatile, hybrid, 2-D and 3-D parallel plasma simulation code

– Direct sales through Tech-X

• A cross platform, mathematical optimization algorithms offering an easy-to-use object oriented design

– Direct sales and available at Programmer’s Paradise; binary and source licensing available

• A task farming application for cluster computing with Research Systems Inc.’s IDL

– RSI exclusive reseller

• Remote visualization of very large data sets– Technology demonstration available from Tech-X


Tech-X grows

• Scientific Research & Development Projects– Revenue generated by grant-funded projects (DoE, DoD,

NASA) • 2001: $1.2M• 2002: $1.9M• 2003: $2.2M• 2004: $3.3M• 2005: $4.4M• 2007: $5.5M • 2008: $7.5M (estimated)

• SciDAC2 (lead on fusion, CCA)• 5 Phases 2’s this year


FACETS: Framework Application for Core-Edge-Transport Simulations

• Tech-X is the lead (Indiana U, GA, LLNL, CSU, Columbia U, PPPL, ORNL, MIT, NYU, LBNL, Lodestar)

• CS and App Math participants (half of funding):– ANL (L. McInnes - parallel solver and J. Larson- coupling)– CSU (D. Estep - coupling)– Indiana (R. Bramley - advisory)– LLNL (T. Dahlgren, G. Kumfert, T. Epperly - architecture, interfaces, testing,

workflow, load balancing, performance eval and tuning etc, L. Diachin - connection with ITAPS)

– ORNL (Jeff Kuehn - performance optimization)– ParaTools (A. Maloney - performance engineering)– Columbia (D. Keys working with Lois)– Tech-X (J. Cary, S. Shasharina and N. Wang - architecture, infrastructure - build

system, regression tests etc)

• Likely to be funded (submitted the budget for $2M/year)


FMCFM - Framework for Modernization and Componentization of Fusion Modules

• Phase 2 just funded by OFES. Johan Carlsson is PI.

• In support of FACETS and SWIM.• Interfaces for transport modeling: equilibrium,

stability, transport models for anomalous transport and transport solvers.

• Components implementation from existing codes and developing 2 new codes.

• Interfaces expressed in F90 and SIDL.• Need optional arguments support in SIDL.


SWIM’s approach uses driver to perform all calls (a bag of common data, like XPLASMA)


Beam Dynamics App based on CCA

• New Phase 1 (ASCR).

• Based on Synergia, MaryLie/Impact and PETSc.

• CCA components out of what we have.

• Use Babel for language interoperability.

• Develop a GUI builder for assembling components (?)

• Doug is here for more details…


General requirements for software easy to use

• Installation– Easy to install on common platforms. Name

includes the package name and version (openmpi-6.0.18)

– Dependencies should be easily figured out– Should be able to install in user area– Follow widely used practices (autotools)– Installation verification (tests)


Continued easy of use

• Usage– Avoid compiler wrappers, like mpicc (wrappers

might be used in several packages, like hdf5, babel, openmpi and it can be messy).

– If wrappers, it would be nice to query them who and where they are) like one can query python for all load flags, how to dynamically link in shared objects

– Good memory model. Needs to be obvious if I need to delete something.


Continued ease of use• Intrusion minimization

– I do not want to change my environment. All env vars should be documented (no need to go to a mailing list)

– Avoid LD_LIBRARY_PATH (rpath or static libs then)– I do not want to put my implementation into another system

(like I need to do with Babel and C WS Core Globus), so that my code is independent and uses anoter system as libs and includes. Example: CORBA skeletons.

– I should be able to use my build system even if I used somebody’s software. Contra example is C WS Globus.

• Licensing– BSD or LGPL is preferred (expensive and time consuming to

deal with legal issues)


Requirements for components framework based on VORPAL experience

• Doubt that composition GUI will be used. VORPAL has 423 classes and FACETS will be more complex. Will use “main”.

• Some kind of objects factory: “Give me an implementation named "MyImpl" that satisfies the interface, "TheIfc", call it "theIfc", and register it somewhere globally.” Then one sets data through an object descriptor. Registry gives access trough a pointer.

• The Object Descriptor must specify what is held, what connected to, algorithms to use.


Continued

• Language:– C++ working with other language codes. – Generate SIDL from the used language.

• Librarification – We will be interconnecting what are now

whole codes. – Want to bring these into a common

framework.

Documents

Tech-X Corporation for CCA Overview Tech-X Corporation is an entrepreneurial and dynamic enterprise committed to scientific and technical excellence and