The Sharing and Training of HPC Resources at the University of Arkansas

1
The Sharing and Training of HPC Resources at the
University of Arkansas

• Amy Apon, Ph.D.
• Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium
• October 4, 2006

2
Outline of Talk

• HPC at the University of Arkansas
• Current status
• A New Mechanism for Sharing Resources
• AREON
• HPC Training
• New course delivery via HDTV collaboration with
  LSU
• Collaboration opportunities and challenges
• GPNGrid and SURAGrid
• Resource allocation issues

3
High Performance Computing Resourcesat the
University of Arkansas

• Red Diamond supercomputer
• NSF MRI grant, August, 2004
• Substantial University match
• Substantial gift from Dell
• First supercomputer in Arkansas
• Number 379 on the Top 500 list, June, 2005
• 128 node (256 processor), 1.349 TFlops

4
More Resources

• Prospero cluster
• 30 dual processor PIII nodes
• SURAGrid resource
• Ace cluster
• 4 dual processor Opteron
• Our entry point to the GPNGrid/Open Science Grid
• Trillion cluster
• 48 dual processor Opteron
• Owned by Mechanical Engineering
• About 1TFlop

5

• How are we doing

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We are seeing research results

• Computational Chemistry and Materials Science
  (NSF)
• New formulas for new drugs
• Nanomaterials
• Chemistry, Physics, Mechanical Engineering
• Over 95 of our usage is in these areas

7
Research results in other areas, also

• Multiscale Modeling
• DNA Computing
• Middleware and HPC Infrastructure
• Tools for managing data for large-scale
  applications (NSF)
• Performance modeling of grid systems (Acxiom)

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We have done some significant upgrades

• For the first year we used SGE on half the
  computer and half of the computer was
  self-scheduled PVM jobs
• LSF scheduler installed
• May 2006
• About 60 users, about 10 very active users

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Thanks to LSF, we are busy

• LSF Daily Pending Parallel Job Statistics
• by Queue (jobs waiting)

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And jobs have to wait

• LSF Hourly Turnaround Time of
• Normal Queue

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• We have something exciting to share

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AREON
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
TULSA
Fayetteville
Jonesboro
Russellville
Fort Smith
Conway
MEMPHIS
We ARE ON !
Little Rock
Pine Bluff
Arkadelphia
Monticello
Magnolia
DALLAS
25-July-2006
MONROE
13
AREON
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network

• The first bond issue (last fall) failed
• Governor Huckabee of Arkansas granted 6.4M
• (PI Zimmerman)
• MBO loop between Tulsa and Fayetteville fiber is
  in place, network hardware is being shipped
• The campus (last mile) connections are in
  progress
• All is on target for a demo to the Governor on
  12/5/06!

TULSA
Fayetteville
Jonesboro
Russellville
Fort Smith
Conway
MEMPHIS
Little Rock
Pine Bluff
Arkadelphia
Monticello
Magnolia
DALLAS
MONROE
14
AREON
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network

• This fall, Uark will have connectivity to
  Internet2 and
• the National Lambda Rail
• The bond issue is on the ballot again this
  coming fall
• If it passes then the other research
  institutions
• will be connected to AREON
• We hope this happens!
• The timeframe for this is about a year and a
  half

15
Opportunities for collaboration with OneNet,
LEARN, LONI, GPN, and others
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A Demonstration Application

• High Performance Computing
• New course in Spring 2007
• In collaboration with LSU and Dr.
  Thomas Sterling
• We are exploring new methods of course delivery
  using streaming high-definition TV
• We expect about 40 students at five locations
  this time
• Taught live via Access Grid and HDTV
• over AREON and LONI,
• A test run for future delivery of HPC education

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Collaboration via GPN Grid

• Active middleware collaboration for almost 3
  years
• GPNGrid is in the process of making application
  as a new Virtual Organization in Open Science
  Grid
• Sponsored by University of Nebraska Lincoln,
  includes participants from Arkansas, UNL,
  Missouri, KU, KSU, OU
• Hardware grant from Sun and NSF provide 4 small
  Opteron clusters for the starting grid
  environment
• Applications are in the process of being defined

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Collaboration via SURA Grid

• Uark has a 30-node Pentium cluster in SURAGrid
• Some differences with GPN
• CA is different
• Account management, discovery stacks are
  different
• AUP policy is different

• SURA Grid applications are increasing. Uark can
  run coastal
• modeling and is open to running other SURA
  applications

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More Collaboration Mechanisms

• Arkansas is participating with the recently
  awarded CI-TEAM award to OU, PI Neeman
• Will deploy Condor across Oklahoma and with
  participating collaborators
• LSF Multicluster provides another mechanism for
  collaboration
• AREON will give the University of Arkansas great
  bandwidth

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UofA Current HPC Challenges

• We have some I/O infrastructure challenges
• The system was designed to have a large amount of
  storage, but it is not fast
• Supercomputing operations
• AC, power, and UPS need to be upgraded
• Funding models for on-going operations
• How will basic systems administration and project
  director be funded?

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Collaboration and sharing bring a challenge

• Usage policies
• How do you partition usage fairly
• among existing users?
• How do you incorporate usage from new faculty?
• Current policy uses a fair-share scheduling
  policy.
• Dynamic Priority
• ( shares) / (slotsF1 cpu_timeF2
  run_timeF3)
• Shares divided among largest users groups chem,
  phys, others

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Collaboration and sharing bring a challenge

• Are max run times needed?
• Almost everyone has them
• Requires checkpointing of jobs
• which is hard to do with our current I/O
  infrastructure
• Requires user education and a change of culture
• Are user allocations and accounting of usage
  needed?
• Your suggestions here

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Questions?

• Contact information
• http//hpc.uark.edu
• http//comp.uark.edu/aapon
• aapon_at_uark.edu