Henry Neeman, Director

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Setting Upa Low Cost Statewide
CyberinfrastructureInitiative

• Henry Neeman, Director
• OU Supercomputing Center for Education Research
• University of Oklahoma

Friday May 30 2008
http//www.oscer.ou.edu/
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What is Cyberinfrastructure?

• Supercomputing/High Performance Computing/
  High End Computing
• High Throughput Computing
• High Performance Networking
• Computational Science Engineering
• Grid Computing
• Scientific Visualization
• Shared Sensor Networks
• Shared Instruments
• Shared Data Collections
• Distressingly, NSFs definition of CI can be even
  broader than this.

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NSF EPSCoR RII

• The National Science Foundations EPSCoR Research
  Infrastructure Improvement provides EPSCoR
  jurisdictions (including all of GPN except MO) up
  to 3M per year for up to 5 years.
• The most recent solicitation required a
  Cyberinfrastructure plan (mentioned 18 times in
  the program solicitation).
• But, theres no set-aside funding for CI its
  an unfunded mandate.
• Expect this to continue indefinitely.
• So, what kind of Cyberinfrastructure can a state
  provide?

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OK Cyberinfrastructure Initiative

• Oklahomas plan the Oklahoma Cyberinfrastructure
  Initiative (OCII, pronounced Okie) involves
  cooperation between the University of Oklahoma
  and Oklahoma State University
• All centrally-owned CI is available to everyone
  at OU and OSU, so that everyone at OSU can use OU
  resources and vice versa, via high speed
  statewide OneNet.
• All academic institutions in the state are
  eligible to sign up for (some) free use of OUs
  and OSUs centrally-owned CI resources.
• Other kinds of institutions (government, NGO,
  commercial) are also eligible to use, though not
  necessarily for free.

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OK Cyberinfrastructure Initiative

• Oklahomas plan the Oklahoma Cyberinfrastructure
  Initiative (OCII, pronounced Okie) involves
  cooperation between the University of Oklahoma
  and Oklahoma State University
• With OUs help, OSU is setting up a Condor pool
  to flock with OUs.
• OUs Education, Outreach Training effort is now
  available statewide (mostly through OUs NSF
  CI-TEAM grant).
• OUs rounds program (one-on-one CI help) is now
  available statewide
• Discussions are underway with the Oklahoma Center
  for the Advancement of Science and Technology
  (OCAST) to alert Oklahoma companies to OCII
  resources.

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What Does OCII Cost?

• NOTHING!
• Okay, maybe a little. But not much.
• You can make your CI available to everyone in the
  state, but most of them wont use it, and the
  rest wont use it that much.
• Regardless, the funding agencies love it when you
  do this.
• You get to meet fun people from all over your
  state.
• And, they love you because you give them free
  stuff even if you dont end up giving them very
  much, by their choice.
• It does take a labor investment to go out and
  market your CI initiative cold calling,
  e-mailing, visiting other institutions around the
  state. But thats fun too.

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Free Hardware!

• How can you get FREE HARDWARE?
• NSF has a program called Major Research
  Instrumentation (MRI).
• This program will give your institution up to 4M
  for hardware, and they fund several clusters
  every year (but ask for less than 1M, to raise
  your chance of success).
• Each institution only gets 2 MRI acquisition
  proposal slots per year, so you have to convince
  your institution that you should get one.
• If you line up a couple dozen participants,
  youve got a very compelling argument why you
  should get one of the slots.

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Free Hardware! (with Hard Work)

• Budget
• Ask for a little under 1M at 1M and above,
  theres an extra round of reviews thats much
  harder to survive.
• Spend your NSF budget on hardware, not on space,
  power, cooling or labor.
• Your institution needs to provide 30 cost share,
  but the cost share has to be spent on things that
  are allowed to be funded under the NSF budget,
  which excludes space, power and cooling but
  labor is allowed, so spend your cost share on
  labor.
• Describe how your hardware will be administered.
  (And DONT say that your sysadmin will be a grad
  student.)
• Include a letter of commitment listing everything
  that will be provided by your institution.

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Free Hardware! (with Hard Work)

• Your Hardware
• Justify your particular hardware decision,
  especially if its more expensive than a vanilla
  x86-64 cluster.
• Avoid listing multiple different resources
  thatll look like a shopping list. Make it look
  like one big, coherent thing with multiple pieces
  working together.
• Dont include components that very few users will
  want to use they should pay for those
  components on their own project budgets.
• Include one or more vendor quotes for your
  hardware in the Supplementary Documents.

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Free Hardware! (with Hard Work)

• Projects That Will Use the Hardware
• Describe several projects, including well-funded
  hero projects, each in about a page of detail,
  to showcase your top users.
• Also list several other projects in less detail,
  to show that the hardware will be busy all the
  time.
• You dont need a unifying science or engineering
  theme computational science and engineering is
  fine.
• List the number of faculty, staff and students
  who will use the hardware, for each of the
  projects and in total.
• If a project involves multiple institutions,
  specify which parts will be done by your
  institution.
• List all the relevant current and pending
  funding, for each project and in total, in the
  project description.

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Free Hardware! (with Hard Work)

• How Will the Hardware Help Beyond Your
  Institution?
• Mention that youre in an EPSCoR state. Several
  times. They want to give EPSCoR states more
  money!
• Its great if you promise to provide the hardware
  to (or if youre at) non-PhD granting and/or
  minority serving institutions, and have letters
  of support showing that theyre on board.
• Have letters of commitment from relevant people
  saying that theyll give you the stuff that you
  say theyll give you, so it doesnt look like
  youre making it up.

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Okla. Supercomputing Symposium
Tue Oct 7 2008 _at_ OU Over 235 registrations
already! Over 150 in the first day, over 200 in
the first week, over 225 in the first month.
2003 Keynote Peter Freeman NSF Computer
Information Science Engineering Assistant
Director
2004 Keynote Sangtae Kim NSF Shared Cyberinfrastr
ucture Division Director
2005 Keynote Walt Brooks NASA Advanced Supercompu
ting Division Director

• 2006 Keynote
• Dan Atkins
• Head of NSFs
• Office of
• Cyber-
• infrastructure

2007 Keynote Jay Boisseau Director Texas
Advanced Computing Center U. Texas Austin
2008 Keynote José Munoz Deputy Office Director/
Senior Scientific Advisor Office of Cyber-
infrastructure National Science Foundation
FREE! Parallel Computing Workshop Mon Oct 6 _at_
OU FREE! Symposium Tue Oct 7 _at_ OU
http//symposium2008.oscer.ou.edu/
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Thanks for your attention!Questions?
http//www.oscer.ou.edu/