DISCOVER DISCOVER CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE Terashake: Simulating “The Big One” COVER STORY
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San Diego Supercomputer Center SPECIAL ISSUE FOR SC2004 DISCOVER DISCOVER CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE TeraShake: Simulating “the Big One” COVER STORY TERASHAKE EARTHQUAKE SIMULATION Ground surface velocity predicted for earthquake waves in the large-scale SCEC/CME, GEOFFREY ELY, UCSD TeraShake simulation of magnitude 7.7 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault. The simulation ran for more than four days on SDSC’s 10 teraflops IBM DataStar supercomputer, producing an unprecedented 47 terabytes of data. Figure displays detailed fault-parallel velocity, showing the intense back- and-forth shaking predicted, with blue indicating upward motion and red indicating downward motion. The north-to-south fault rupture (thick white line) produced especially intense ground motion in the sediment-filled basin of the Coachella Valley which “shook like a bowl of jelly,” reaching peak velocities of more than 2 meters per second. TeraShake research will advance basic earthquake science and eventually help design more earthquake-resistant structures. 4 Terashake: Simulating the “Big One” on the San Andreas Fault THE SAN DIEGO SUPERCOMPUTER CENTER SDSC cyberinfrastructure Founded in 1985, the San Diego Supercomputer Center models 7.7 earthquake in (SDSC) has a long history of enabling science and engineering discoveries. Continuing this legacy into the unprecedented detail. next generation, SDSC’s mission is to “extend the reach” of researchers and educators by serving as a core resource for cyberinfrastructure— providing them with high-end hardware technologies, integrative software technologies, and deep interdisciplinary expertise. SDSC is an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego and is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). With a staff of more than 400 scientists, software developers, and support personnel, SDSC is an international leader in data management, grid computing, biosciences, geosciences, and visualization. SDSC INFORMATION Fran Berman, Director Vijay Samalam, Executive Director San Diego Supercomputer Center University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive MC 0505 La Jolla, CA 92093-0505 Phone: 858-534-5000 Fax: 858-534-5152 [email protected] www.sdsc.edu FROM THE DIRECTOR Greg Lund, Director of Communications ENVISION Delivering Cyberinfrastructure, enVision magazine is published by SDSC and presents Enabling Discovery leading-edge research in cyberinfrastructure and computational science. In the science and engineering ISSN 1521-5334 community, there’s a lot of discussion EDITOR: Greg Lund about cyberinfrastructure these days. [email protected] 858-534-8314 DESIGNER: Gail Bamber [email protected] 2 858-534-5150 Any opinions, conclusions, or recommendations in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF, other funding organizations, SDSC, or UC San Diego. All brand names and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. ALAN DECKER FEATURES 8 A New Star for Cyberinfrastructure SDSC’s DataStar Supercomputer tackles tough problems from molecules to galaxies. 12 SDSC Helps Students Make Beautiful Music 14 Storage Resource Broker harmonizes music education in SDSU EdCenter project. SDSC Technologies Power SIOExplorer Oceanography Digital Library Cyberinfrastructure to rescue legacy data and harvest THE BACK COVER shipboard data in real time. GEON Tools Reveal Earth’s Interior Tools developed in the NSF GEON project “Cyberinfrastructure for the Geosciences” help geoscientists “see” into the Earth. ALAN DECKER From the Director Delivering Cyberinfrastructure, Enabling Discovery n the science and engineering community, there’s a lot of discussion about cyberinfrastructure these days. For the record, cyberinfrastructure is the organized aggregate of technologies that enable us to access and integrate today’s informationI technology resources—data and storage, computation, communication, visualization, networking, scientific instruments, expertise—to facilitate science and engineering goals. Cyberinfra- structure captures the culture of modern science and engineering research and provides the technological foundation for significant discovery, synthesis, and dissemination brought about by the Information Revolution. It is widely believed in the science and their ability to focus on the challenges of the engineering community, and compellingly science rather than the challenges of using the described in the 2003 Report of the NSF Blue tools driving new discovery. In the response, Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure SDSC described a broad spectrum of user-ori- (the “Atkins Report”), that achievement of the ented cyberinfrastructure services that will “Cyberinfrastructure cyberinfrastructure vision has the power to enable users to focus on the science. Particular transform science and engineering research and efforts will be made to help users coordinate ultimately will be education. And the key to achievement of the the technological tools at their disposal in their cyberinfrastructure vision is the planning, local “home” environment with the larger evaluated not by the delivery, and commitment to make cyberinfra- landscape of cyberinfrastructure resources. structure, and the cyberscience it will enable, a success of its vision, reality. INTEGRATION Last Spring, SDSC responded to an NSF Cyberinfrastructure involves the integration but by the success of “Dear Colleague” letter for “Core” fund- of a wide variety of human, software, ing to evolve its activities from a and hardware systems to form a the infrastructure PACI Leading Edge Site to a powerful platform for enabling Cyberinfrastructure Center. The new discovery. The coordination, that is delivered to core funding response gave SDSC synthesis, and teaming required to an opportunity to think deeply provide cohesive support embod- the user and the about the challenges and opportu- ies both the promise and the chal- nities of cyberinfrastructure and lenge of the cyberinfrastructure enabling of cyberscience, and to develop a com- vision. SDSC’s response described the- prehensive and cohesive action plan to matic, organizational, and management ven- cyberscience.” build and deliver enabling cyberinfrastructure. ues for the integration and synthesis of science SDSC’s Core funding response focused on and engineering goals and cyberinfrastructure three key themes critical to achievement of the technologies. Integration activities included cyberinfrastructure vision: extensive user-focused software and services, community collaboration projects that bridge SERVICE science and technology goals, and the creation The “customers” and beneficiaries of cyber- of a joint SDSC/Cal-IT2 Synthesis Center for infrastructure are its users, and the ultimate leveraging infrastructure across projects and metric of success for cyberinfrastructure is disciplines. 2 ENVISION 2004 www.sdsc.edu by Francine Berman, Director, San Diego Supercomputer Center LEADERSHIP of the commercial sector and their experience and grids, and high performance computing with infrastructure at scale. This autumn, we . The achievement of the cyberinfrastructure and storage are initiating the Cyberinfrastructure is a long-term commit- vision will require broad-based community SDSC Cyberinfrastructure with the purpose of developing deep ment for NSF, SDSC, NCSA, PSC, ETF, and leadership as well as substantial commitment Forum partnerships that will facilitate integration of a broad community of collaborators, end-users, and effort. Building on a generation of exten- innovative academic and commercial efforts to process-builders, scientists, engineers, sive work in data technologies and data sci- design, develop, and build cyberinfrastructure. researchers, and educators who can benefit ence, the SDSC Core response focused on a from the implementation of this transforming comprehensive and coordinated set of activities Cyberinfrastructure ultimately will be evalu- vision. It will not happen without strategic to build out the “data stack,” forming an inte- ated not by the success of its vision, but by the success of the infrastructure that is delivered to the planning, coordinated effort, resources, and grated end-to-end Data Cyberinfrastructure. The Core commitment. In this issue of , we We are also increasingly engaging the key user and the enabling of cyberscience. enVision response allowed SDSC to develop a thought- inaugurate SDSC’s initial “official” activities as communities of computer scientists and social ful plan of action to build and deliver key serv- a Cyberinfrastructure Center. With these activ- scientists as cyberinfrastructure “process ices, infrastructure, and innovations that will ities and other critical enablers, the cyberinfra- builders,” and are intensifying traditional activ- contribute to the ultimate success of cyberin- structure vision holds the promise to achieve ities to provide a rich environment for cyberin- frastructure, and to focus in on the critical the potential of the Information Revolution, frastructure’s “end users.” areas of and to transform science and engineering in There is an important opportunity with applications, software and services, our time. M cyberinfrastructure to leverage the innovations databases and data technologies, networking ALEX PERRYMAN, JUNG-HSIN LIN, ANDREW MCCAMMON,ALEX PERRYMAN, UCSD SDSC cyberinfrastructure enables detailed molecular dynamics simulations of drug- resistant HIV protease, helping scientists identify a potential mechanism