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Research Support Services


Research Computing Initiative

• Team Members Sande Johnson-Byers

Michael Dyre

Deepak Sharma

Harrison Simrall

Chris Kimmer

Rohini Sharma

Vincent Bellina

Goal : Develop high-performance computing capabilities within IT to support existing research and enable new research


Overview

• The Cardinal Research Cluster

• Outreach

• Grant-writing Assistance

• Consulting Services Open Consultations Extended Consultations Application Development

• Research Collaborations


High Performance Computing Cluster312 nodes/2496 cores16 or 23 GB/node Informatics

Server/Storage

Visualizationserver

Global Storage

Management node

User services Login nodes

1/10 Gbps Ethernet

Visualization Cluster

100+ TB

Campus network

4x DDR Infiniband

SMP IBM p57016 CPUs

Statisticalserver

Cardinal Research Cluster - CRC


Cyberinfrastructure - CRC

• Distributed-memory cluster (IBM iDataplex)

• Shared-memory machine (IBM p570) / Statistics Server

• Informatics cluster – 14 TB storage (Oracle, MySQL)

• Visualization server (High-end nVidia GPU)

• User Data Storage – 100 TB (GPFS)

• High-speed networking (Internet 2)


Using the CRC 1

• Usage polices are unobtrusive until resources become over-used

• Faculty governance council resolves contention for resources in concert with IT

• Resources allocated to faculty PI on project-by-project basis

Resources: CPU Time, storage requirements, consulting time Students and research staff listed on a project can request an

account For a course, instructor sponsors students for CRC access


Using the CRC 2

• When submitting a job, user identifies project• Fair share usage: projects nearing limit of CPU time

get less priority than projects that have used little Estimate of required CPU time can be revised upwards

• Disk space Running jobs use “scratch” space which is not backed up When scratch is over 90% full, users are notified that their

oldest files will be deleted in a week


Outreach

• Research computing consultants are available to attend department or group meetings to publicize research support services and interact with researchers

• Meet with faculty candidates or new hires• Assist with preparing startup packages requiring HPC

resources• Participate in grant-writing workshops• Regularly-offered HPC seminars


HPC Seminars

• Interdisciplinary seminar series offered in conjunction with other departments – coincide with HPC users group meetings

• “Introduction to HPC” offered frequently in early 2009, twice-yearly after that

• “Introduction to Parallel Programming” (cf. CECS 590 – Spring 2009), offered regularly through IT consultants

• Advanced instruction available upon request• Course materials always available on website


Assistance with computational grants

• Expert consultation on integrating CRC resources and new research areas

• Collaboration with faculty using in-house expertise Consulting for new ideas Collaboration on funded projects

• Text about HPC environment & high-speed networking freely available on website

• Letters of support available for grant proposals – allow 3 business days lead time


Consulting Services

• Guidance in all aspects of computational research hardware and software selection programming tools or appropriate software algorithms, numerical methods, simulations

• Develop new applications in collaboration with researchers

• Debug parallel applications – requires skills many researchers do not possess


Open Consulting

• Short term (8 hours or less)• Provides general support in cases that require more

detail than can be efficiently provided by email, phone, etc.

HPC software support Project planning or grant proposals

• Request open consulting simply by contacting a consultant (email [email protected]) or go to the website and fill out the form (http://louisville.edu/it/support/research/consulting-project-application/)

mailto:[email protected]


Extended Consulting

• Differs from open consulting in scope and duration (8-160 hours at no charge to researcher)

• Longer-term consultations incur consulting fees• Appropriate for:

Generating preliminary results for grant proposals Research application development projects True collaboration with research groups

• Apply for extended consulting on the website (http://louisville.edu/it/support/research/consulting-project-application/)


Research Application Development Services

1. Consulting, design, and development of new research applications

Guidance in all aspects of research application development: hardware and software selection, planning, programming tools and techniques

2. Modification of existing applications Debugging or optimization of existing applications or

incorporation of new visualization or data storage methods


Consulting Project Policies

• Open consulting should be free and available to all researchers on a first come first served basis

• Extended consulting projects are sufficiently complicated that an application and review process is necessary

Ensure’s that IT’s limited research-computing resources are used in a fair manner consistent with the university’s strategic plan


Extended consulting project review process

The review process will have 2 stages:

1. An internal merit-based review To assess the academic soundness and feasibility of the

project Is the project aligned with strategic research goals Does the project have potential to generate funding?

2. Review of the resource requirements


Collaboration

• Research computing consultants are available for collaboration on grants

• Hardware may be funded through grants and added to existing HPC environment

• Collaborations on grants that require additional staffing through soft money

• Potential for collaborations only limited by availability and expertise of research computing consultants


Questions?

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