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Samford University Virtual Supercomputer (SUVS)

Samford University Virtual Supercomputer (SUVS). Brian Toone 4/14/09. Outline. Motivation Concepts Demo. Motivation (in pictures). 4 hours to reach 3% ETA: 5½ days. Motivation (in pictures). Motivation (in words). Large datasets geographic information systems bioinformatics

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Samford University Virtual Supercomputer (SUVS)

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  1. Samford University Virtual Supercomputer(SUVS) Brian Toone 4/14/09

  2. Outline • Motivation • Concepts • Demo

  3. Motivation (in pictures) 4 hours to reach 3% ETA: 5½ days

  4. Motivation (in pictures)

  5. Motivation (in words) • Large datasets • geographic information systems • bioinformatics • chemistry • physics • environmental modeling • A single Dell office computer can’t handle the load, but… what if we use more than one?!

  6. Motivation, cont’d • We have a plethora of computers that are idle a large majority of the time • Let’s take advantage of the hardware investment that has already been made to provide computing power to enable research tasks on traditionally computationally intractable problems

  7. What’s the catch? • Sounds almost too good to be true • It is and it isn’t • easy – providing an environment to connect computers together … BOINC! • challenge – creating parallel algorithms to run on the computing environment • challenge – making it easy for programmers and scientists to submit work

  8. Concepts • Technical term – non-dedicated cluster • set of computers whose idle time is harnessed to process jobs • individual nodes in the cluster function as standalone computers • in laymen’s terms: “let’s hook a bunch of lab computers together” • Software environment – BOINC • powers many worldwide projects (e.g., SETI@home, World Community Grid, climateprediction.net, etc…) • step-by-step instructions (minus the details) of how to build a campus virtual supercomputer

  9. Can we build a supercomputer? • Yes – with campus-wide buy-in • Let’s start on a smaller scale… • Here we have five computers • With 5 computers – Florida export ~1 day • Adding additional computers is easy(<5min setup) • With 40 computers - Florida export in ~2 hours

  10. Usage scenarios • Simplest scenario • Non-parallel application with long runtime • You don’t want your office or lab computer tied up running the computation • Solution: submit your non-parallel app to the cluster using an easy-to-use web interface!

  11. Usage scenarios • Build or convert an existing parallel application • Four components • Work generator • The client program • Result validator • Result assimilator

  12. Usage scenarios • Classroom tool • networking • databases • algorithms and data structures • parallel computing • hardware

  13. Languages supported • C/C++ have the best support • Java • Any arbitrary executable (with a catch!)

  14. Demo • Simple example (embarrassingly parallel)Calculate the sum of all the numbers between 1 and 100,000,000,000 • No modifications necessary to original Java program as long as it already reads its starting and ending numbers from the command line

  15. Demo source code • Java application

  16. Demo source code, cont’d • Work generator

  17. Assimilator

  18. Getting Involved • Become a beta tester for usage scenario 1(i.e., the web application for uploading an app to run on the cluster) • Suggest a project for collaboration, and I will assist in the conversion process

  19. Thank you! • More information about the project can be found on my faculty web page: http://faculty.samford.edu/~brtoone

  20. Questions?

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