Towards a Virtual European
Supercomputing Infrastructure
Vision & issues
www.deisa.org
Sanzio Bassini
www.cineca.it
Mission statement
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To contribute to a significant enhancement of capacities and capabilities of
HPC in Europe, by the integration of national supercomputing
infrastructures.
To deploy and operate a distributed multi-terascale European computing
platform, based on a very strong coupling of existing national
supercomputers. DEISA plans to operate as a virtual European
supercomputing centre.
To contribute to the deployment of an extended, heterogeneous Grid
computing environment for HPC in Europe, needed to interface the DEISA
research infrastructures with the rest of the European IT infrastructures.
Subjects
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Technical
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Global File systems
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Heterogeneous extension
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Relations to Grid technologies
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Deployment of high bandwidth vpn – qos
Other
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Collaborations & pan-European perspective
Artist’s view of the infrastructure
The DEISA super-cluster
High bandwidth vpn – qos
National computing
facility
Site B
Site A
Site C
Site D
Extended Grid
services
Two levels of operation
Unicore, Grid application toolkits, etc
DEISA heterogeneous resource
management interfaces
The heterogeneous Grid extension
operates here.
Grid information services
Grid data and resource management
Grid middleware (Globus Toolkit)
Grid Security Infrastructure
Global file systems
Multi-cluster batch managers
Operating system
The integration of national
supercomputers operates at this
technology level, underneath the
Globus Toolkit
Global File Systems
Sophisticated software environment,
necessary to provide single system
image if a clustered computing
platform.
Global file system
It provide global data management.
Data in the GFS is “symmetric” with
respect to all computing nodes.
GFS encapsulate sophisticated distributed computing and Grid technologies.
Applications do not need to be modified to benefit from GFS services.
Grid technologies are working in the background, and they are not directly
seen by end users.
The integration concept
Site A
Site B
VPN - QOS
Site C
Global distributed file system
with continental scope: the key
super-cluster integration technology.
Site D
Co-scheduling and meta-computing
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As co-scheduling not yet mature enough to be massively used in national
supercomputing centers without disrupting the efficiency of national
services…
… DEISA does not rely on meta-computing for massive science production.
Instead, it adopts a simple, innovative operational model that relies on
communication bandwidth to make the latency problem irrelevant.
Co-scheduling and meta-computing will only be used in selected cases of
weakly coupled distributed applications.
The operational model
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Global management of a “resource pool”, that will allow:
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The availability of an integrated supercomputing environment for transnational collaborations, providing global data management through global
file systems.
Implementation of job migration across sites (transparent to end users)
as a way of releasing significant resources in one particular site for
demanding applications. Load balancing computational throughput at a
European scale.
Support of distributed applications.
Heterogeneous integration
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Fundamental strategic choice: no commitment to any
particular technology or vendor.
This is an operating system (OS) issue, not a hardware issue.
At this point in time, heterogeneous extension means
integration AIX and Linux systems
May be, the only OS whose survival seems guaranteed in the
long term.
DEISA and Grid technologies
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Large scale integration of IT systems is, for DEISA, primarily a strategic
issue
DEISA is technology neutral. Technology choices follow from their
capability to adapt to a pre-established operational model, and to provide
real services to end users.
Three criteria for technology choices:
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The necessity of disposing as soon as possible of a stable and reliable European
production platform (the “core” platform). Grid technologies work in the
background through global file systems and multi-cluster batch managers.
The necessity interfacing this platform with other systems in Europe (the “outer”
Grid environment). Deployment of traditional Grid environments
The preparation of their future evolution by the integration of new Grid
technologies as they reach maturity (a specific JRA activity).
USERS issues
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Scientific strategies, identification of users communities:
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Strong deployment of industrial application
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An aggressive communication plan to inform the scientific community of the new
horizons in computational science enabled by DEISA
Measure of success
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A specific joint research activity with industries, leaded by FIAT Research
Center in strict connection with DEISA steering commette, is active since the
beginning of the project
First priority actions
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These are standard actions carried out by the centres, and an important wealth
of national scientific reports and strategic studies are available today. This
national input must be repositioned in a larger European perspective.
DEISA has to provide measurable impact on computational science. This issue will
be followed by the DEISA Scientific Committee
Monitoring access to resources
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Standard service in national supercomputing centers. The dedicated interplatform network will be included in the list of monitories resources.
Complementarities with other UE projects in the
domain of supercomputing
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Fully complementary between DEISA and HPC-Europe
HCP-Europe has to do with the access service provision of
supercomputing infrastructure
More than 5000 users will be hosted by many DEISA
partners to have access to large scale facilities for
supercomputing and towards the deployment of a Virtual
European Supercomputing Infrastructures
“Single point of access” and “Single point of user support”
Outreach common shared vision
Cooperation with other leading projects
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With EGEE
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Exploitation of middleware technologies for the access
to high end computing facility;
Next generation Grid road map;
Dissemination;
With US Teragrid
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Deployment of Global File System
Characterization and Implementation constrain of a
global Cyberinfrastructure