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Here Convenes for the Western Grid Summit, It Is Timely to Publish This Report on Westgrid’S Advances

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Here Convenes for the Western Grid Summit, It Is Timely to Publish This Report on Westgrid’S Advances Introduction Message from the Executive In the spring of 2004, WestGrid became fully operational. The grid-enabled resources of this project in Alberta and British Columbia are functioning day and night for hundreds of researchers, working on projects in the sciences, engineering, arts and humanities. WestGrid is one of a few projects worldwide with such a fully functional and innovative set of shared, grid-enabled resources. In this report, you will be introduced to these resources – including the final round of acquisitions made in the first quarter of 2005. You will learn about some of the extraordinary research taking advantage of these powerful tools, and the people making this possible. All of this has come together over the past three years as a result of the work of a dedicated core of excellent people – from the architects of the original design, to the technical site leads, to the collaboration specialists, to the frontline technology support staff at participating institutions, to the administrators. These people share the vision for excellence and innovation that inspired us to take up this project in the first place. We are doing this to enhance the competitive advantage it gives WestGrid researchers, to support their quest for new knowledge, discovery and innovation. Collaborative projects like this begin to pick up their own momentum. We are now working on a proposal for “WestGrid II,” which will expand the number of participating institutions, allowing us to increase our critical mass that, in turn, will allow us to make better facilities available to the research community. As the grid community in western Canada and elsewhere convenes for the Western Grid Summit, it is timely to publish this report on WestGrid’s advances. We are delighted to report some remarkable progress, and look forward to seeing the pace of innovation accelerate. WestGrid Annual Report 2005 page 1 Project Highlights WestGrid is an over $50 million project to purchase and install grid-enabled computing resources in British Columbia and Alberta. The project completed its second year in 2004-05. During this period, the resources were fully operational and the final round of acquisitions were made. Highlights of the past year include: 1) Technical innovation WestGrid has a distributed set of grid-enabled resources. Over 750 researchers now have access to a range of computing resources utilizing grid-based single sign-on. This access to distributed resources is supported by grid services. These services enable: • job scheduling across all sites • data storage and backup WestGrid has also implemented a central account management system that streamlines user account administration and renewal. 2) Phase two completion a) A Cray XD1 computer is now available to support research. The machine features 12 AMD Opteron 64-bit processors and 6 Silinx Virtex-II Pro Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The XD1, purchased in November, is based at Simon Fraser University. b) The SGI VizServer at Simon Fraser University had its graphics and processor capabilities upgraded. In December, the VizServer software was upgraded to v3.4.1. The month before, the VizServer was upgraded with two additional graphics pipes and four additional processors. The machine now includes 24 processors, 10 graphics pipes and 14 Gigabytes of memory. page 2 WestGrid Annual Report 2005 c) The IBM Xeon cluster at University of British Columbia was upgraded with the purchase of an additional 640 CPUs – bringing the total CPU count on the University of British Columbia system to 1,680. d) The University of Calgary has ordered an HP XC Infiniband cluster with 256 Opteron processors – which will bring the total CPU count for WestGrid at University of Calgary to 400. e) The University of Alberta has purchased two 64-processor IBM p695 systems. This brings the total CPU count for the WestGrid at University of Alberta to over 500. f) The storage facility at Simon Fraser University was increased to 32 Terabytes of disk and 200 Terabytes of tape storage. 3) User community expansion As of December 2004, the WestGrid system logged 495 registered users in 18 different disciplines. Of these, 142 were in British Columbia, 287 in Alberta, 1 in Saskatchewan, 2 in Manitoba, 39 in Ontario, 15 in Quebec, 3 in Nova Scotia and 3 in Newfoundland. Outside Canada, one user was registered from France and two tapped into WestGrid from the United States (as part of Canadian research teams). These included 134 users from physics, 61 from chemistry, and 45 from biochemistry. Other disciplines included biology, engineering, astronomy, earth sciences, computer science, geology and geomatics. 4) Leadership in Canadian grid and high performance computing development WestGrid organized and took part in events to increase awareness among the research community of the resources available to them through WestGrid WestGrid Annual Report 2005 page 3 Supercomputing November 2004 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Access Grid Seminar Series September 2004 – January 2005 All Access Grid node locations WestGrid How-to Training Sessions Feb-March 2005 All Access Grid node locations Western Grid Summit April 19-20, 2005 Banff, Alberta WestGrid also provides ongoing leadership to Canadian high performance computing developments. Jonathan Schaeffer, Brian Unger and Jonathan Borwein are on the board of directors of c3.ca, the national umbrella organization for high performance computing. Brian Unger was on the executive, and has been replaced by Jonathan Borwein. Jonathan Schaeffer is part of the author’s panel for c3.ca’s national plan for HPC. WestGrid supports the development of a national shared and integrated high performance computing infrastruture through its participation in c3.ca and Grid Cananda. 5) New partners on the horizon In preparation for a follow-on proposal for WestGrid, currently dubbed “WestGrid II,” the project envisions an infrastructure that will include all research universities and major research institutes that need computation resources in western Canada. The wheels are in motion to include new partners for WestGrid’s next grant. To date, the Universities of Victoria, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have indicated their desire to join WestGrid II. page 4 WestGrid Annual Report 2005 Project Milestones 1997 – 2001 MACI project – A collaboration among Alberta universities that led to the identification of requirements for a unified computing environment 2001 Alberta and British Columbia join forces to create WestGrid January 2002 Canada Foundation for Innovation funding for WestGrid confirmed April – December 2002 Committee assembled for network planning and development, Access Grid planning and development, and HPC installation and maintenance February 2003 Core staff and project management team appointed May 2003 Hewlett-Packard, IBM and SGI announced as vendor partners in building the WestGrid research infrastructure November 2003 High performance computing facilities at the University of Alberta (SGI Origin 3900 – 256 processors) and the University of Calgary (HP AlphaServer SC45 – 144 processors) available for general use IBM Xeon blade cluster (1008 processors) at the University of British Columbia available for testing IBM storage facility at Simon Fraser University operational Paracel GeneMatcher 2 available at the University of Calgary’s Sun Center of Excellence for Visual Genomics WestGrid Annual Report 2005 page 5 January 2004 Access Grid nodes functional at Simon Fraser University, TRIUMF, University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, University of British Columbia, University of Alberta and Netera Access Grid nodes operational at desktops across WestGrid institutions WestGrid Visualization Server installed at Simon Fraser University February 2004 IBM Xeon blade cluster (3.06 Ghz Gig-Ethernet) at University of British Columbia/TRIUMF available for general use All WestGrid resources tested and available for general use March 2005 Second round WestGrid acquisitions announced page 6 WestGrid Annual Report 2005 Resources Facilities Overview INTRODUCTION Through two rounds of acquisitions, high performance computing facilities have been installed in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver. These are all grid-enabled and can be accessed from any location. Compute-intensive equations and algorithms that would take days to complete on a desktop computer are possible to process in minutes. These resources also have memory and storage capabilities not available on typical desktop computers. Specialized resources include a shared genomics computing resource, and a grid-enabled server for graphics visualization. Collaboration facilities called Access Grid nodes are located at sites across Alberta and British Columbia and are connected internationally.The Access Grid facilities allow for real-time interactions using audio, video and shared multimedia files. Site Coordinator: Norris Weimer [email protected] WestGrid Annual Report 2005 page 7 Facilities Overview University of Calgary The main WestGrid cluster at the University of Calgary is called Lattice. This system has Alpha processors and a high-speed Quadrics interconnect. In addition the University of Calgary site houses two other Alpha processor-based clusters and a Parasol Genematcher-2 system for performing gene sequence analysis. This site provides Gaussian 03 chemistry software for WestGrid users. Facility Highlights: • 144-processor HP SC45 for message passing parallel computing • HP XC Infiniband cluster with 256 Opteron processors (to be installed) • Additional
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