Distributed EU-wide Supercomputing Facility as a New Research Infrastructure for Europe

1. Distributed EU-wide Supercomputing Facility as a New Research Infrastructure for Europe Gabrielle Allen Albert-Einstein-Institut, Germany Jarek Nabrzyski PSNC, Poland (naber@man.poznan.pl) Ed Seidel Albert-Einstein-Institut, Germany Maciej Stroiński PSNC, Poland

2. Computational Needs not Met • Great scientific and engineering talent in EU • Many EU programs now beginning, with training mission, but: • No EU-wide facilities • No Collaborative Infrastructure • No HPC Training (except for do-it-yourself) • Rely on US connections • What do others do?? • In many cases, they do toy problems • EU science and engineering fall behind • Germany, UK, France are slight exceptions, but no large scale • Many countries (mainly NAS, but not only) simply cut off from modern science

3. Discovery Channel Movie (June 3, 2002!): • 3000 frames of Volume Rendering of TB of simulation data • EU Project simulation had to be computed and visualized in US!

4. How did we do this EU Calculation? • Used largest Academic machines for simulation • LBL/NERSC (US DOE) • NCSA Platinum cluster • High Speed backbone for data transfer • Flew students from Berlin to Illinois • 3 weeks analysis, visualization, using special facilities unavailable to our project in EU • Brought 1TB data back on 6 hard disks purchased in US

5. US ProgramsAvailable to academic researchers from every US state, occasionally to EU • NSF PACI Program • Started 20 years ago • 5 National Centers, now 3, combining to form TeraGrid • US DOE • LBL/NERSC, LANL, etc. • NASA • Goddard, JPL, Ames, etc. • US far ahead of EU in this regard • But even there, widely recognized that facilities are woefully too small for today/tomorrow’s science/engineering

7. Other efforts • Not a unique idea! • ARCADE, CERN, ENACTS, GRIDSTART, other projects, many ideas presented today • Requirements • Must be application oriented • Build both Infrastructure and Expertise Centers • Leverage Grid projects, CS efforts, National centers, networks, etc • Work united with other project organizers, • Long term funding process is required!

8. Our Vision for the EU Facility • Science and Engineering Drivers • Expertise Centers (CFD, Astrophysics, Computational Biology, Aerospace, etc.) • Sheparding/building communities across Europe • Present science/engineering calculations require TB/Tflop/sec, but just scratching the surface! Need much more! • Enabling new science • Computational Science Drivers • Need Grid Software infrastructure • Cycles, networks, visualization centers • Partnerships with existing centers, networks, etc

9. Vision of the Facility • Distributed Nature • Pushes networking technologies through apps • Works to integrate European efforts, scientific, cultural, etc. • East and West at 100Gb/sec! • Multi-lambda backplane (GEANT?) • Unique EU facility in the HPC world • Leapfrog Teragrid with Big Machine, but also • Draw on unique, more diverse EU research strengths • Beginning of a Worldwide Grid Effort • Unique challenges to integrating diverse EU grids • Already strong support from US, NSF, DOE principals • Scientists/engineers know they have expanding facility over coming decades (can affect their projects)

10. Major Center Major Center Our Vision Satellite Satellite Satellite Satellite Satellite Satellite

11. Worldwide Grid Main BH Simulation starts here All analysis tasks spawned automatically to free resources worldwide User only has to invoke “Spawner” thorn…