HPC Solutions for the Manufacturing Industry V Koichiro Suzuki V Nobuhiro Uchida V Hideaki Kuraishi V John Wagner (Manuscript received March 28, 2008) The most important requirement of a high performance computing (HPC) system, commonly known as a supercomputer, has traditionally been computational perfor- mance. Users have had to be familiar with advanced operations in order to make ef- ficient use of high-priced and high-performance hardware. In recent years, however, there has been a shift toward low-cost HPC systems based on a general-purpose ar- chitecture such as personal computer clusters. As a result, the use of HPC systems is now spreading among users specializing in computational science research to the design and development departments in the manufacturing industry that promote vir- tual prototyping (simulation) to reduce development costs. These trends have gen- erated a need for solutions that enable users to operate and manage HPC systems easily and perform design and development work efficiently. This paper explains HPC Portal, a Web-based tool for using HPC systems, System Administrator Portal, an op- eration and management tool, and SynfiniWay, a workflow tool. It also gives examples of solutions using these tools. 1. Introduction manage HPC systems easily through the Web Manufacturing firms hope to become more interface.4) Moreover, Fujitsu Systems Europe competitive by raising the efficiency of design Ltd. has developed SynfiniWay5) as a workflow and development work that uses computer-aided tool to make design and development work on design (CAD)1) and computer-aided engineer- HPC systems more efficient. This paper explains ing (CAE)2) systems as well as by reducing costs, application examples of solutions that use these shortening product time-to-market, and improv- tools for manufacturing firms. ing product quality. Against this background, high performance computing (HPC) systems 2. HPC Portal to support CAE have been spreading among users in compu- users tational science research3) to the design and This section introduces examples to help development departments in the manufactur- CAE users to perform analyses with the simple ing industry. On the other hand, users who graphical user interfaces (GUIs) provided by have used only Windows and the Web in the HPC Portal. past are now confronted with the lack of skill to operate Linux (and UNIX) and the burden of 2.1 Functions administering HPC facilities in the information HPC Portal is a tool that enables end users technology (IT) infrastructure. To solve these to use heterogeneous HPC systems from a Web problems, Fujitsu has developed HPC Portal and browser in a common and easy way. In addition System Administrator Portal4) to operate and to basic functions like file operation, compil- 458 FUJITSU Sci. Tech. J., Vol.44, No.4, pp.458-466 (October 2008) K. Suzuki et al.: HPC Solutions for the Manufacturing Industry ing and linking, job submission, status display, The simple GUI creation function can and batch job deletion, HPC Portal provides generate user-unique parameter-input forms a function that makes it easy to customize a automatically just by specifying component types GUI specific to simulation work in design and (text boxes, pull-down menus, etc.) and menu development (customization of application GUI). selection values in a simple definition file. The Some typical screenshots of HPC Portal are advanced function enables end users to code shown in Figure 1. parameter-input forms by using a Perl script. This lets them create a GUI more freely than 2.2 Customization functions the simple GUI creation function. Although this Considering that system configuration and method requires programming skill, it is much operating policies differ from one customer to less expensive than developing an entire Web another, a fixed GUI would satisfy the needs of application because end users only need to create few customers. HPC Portal has a function that parameter-input forms. The concept behind enables the GUI to be easily customized by a the customization of application GUIs and an definition file or template file, so it can support example of GUI creation are shown in Figure 2. various types of computer equipment and accom- In addition, the base software called POESY modate changes in operating policy such as queue behind HPC Portal and System Administrator classes. Furthermore, with this “application GUI Portal (described later) acts as a content manage- customization” function, HPC Portal provides the ment system6) that simplifies the creation of following functions to simplify the creation of a portals for various purposes. It can be used to job-execution GUI specific to simulation work: edit menus and create Web pages by simple 1) Simple GUI creation by using a definition scripting rules that do not require any HTML file statements. In short, POESY is not limit- 2) Advanced GUI creation by using a Perl ed to creating job-execution GUIs—end users script can easily add pages, including user guide and A &ILEOPERATION B #USTOMIZATIONOFAPPLICATION'5) %XAMPLEOF,3 $9.! Figure 1 Screenshots of HPC Portal. FUJITSU Sci. Tech. J., Vol.44, No.4, (October 2008) 459 K. Suzuki et al.: HPC Solutions for the Manufacturing Industry operating-schedule announcements to menus to unfamiliar with Linux (and UNIX) and promote create and provide CAE support portals that are the use of CAE by providing job-execution GUIs even easier to use. for commonly used CAE applications. 2) Pre/post menus to make simulation work 2.3 Effects of introduction efficient 1) CAE support by simple GUIs In addition to job-execution, the appli- Targeting two computer centers that have cation GUI customization function can be installed the HPC Portal tool, we investigat- adopted to support the preparation of input data ed whether users selected the conventional way (pre-processing) and the preparation of graphs of Linux (and UNIX) (i.e., login by ssh) or HPC and other graphic media for visualizing results Portal. Both centers are in manufacturing indus- (post-processing). POESY, meanwhile, can be tries that promote CAE. We found that the used to automatically generate result reports number of users logging in from HPC Portal was that include simulation parameters and image greater than that from ssh at both centers. We files for visualizing results and to enable infor- then compared the HPC Portal usage frequency mation to be shared among people engaged in between the two centers, and we found that the design and development through the Web. For center with more GUIs created by the application end users who need pre/post processes, we can GUI customization function had a higher HPC create simulation portals that include menus for Portal usage frequency. This shows that simple the “pre-solver-post” sequential processes. These and efficient GUIs created by HPC Portal can portals help to make simulation work more expand the use of HPC systems even among users efficient and simplify information sharing. 0ARAMETER INPUT FORMCREATIONMETHODS 0/%39MENUMANAGEMENT '5)CREATIONBYDEFINITIONFILEREQUIRING NOPROGRAMMING !DVANCED'5)CREATIONBY0ERLSCRIPT %XAMPLEOFCREATINGASIMULATION APPLICATION'5) (0#0ORTALCOMMON ,3 $9.! OPERATIONSECTION !"!153 3TRUCTURECOLLISION !$).! .ASTRAN &,5%.4 &LUIDS 34!2 #$ 'AUSSIAN 0ARAMETER INPUTFORM -OLECULES !MBER CUSTOMER UNIQUESECTION -3$ISCOVER $-OL 0OYNTING %LECTROMAGNETISM !##5&)%,$ /THER )N HOUSEAPPLICATION Figure 2 Application GUI customization function. 460 FUJITSU Sci. Tech. J., Vol.44, No.4, (October 2008) K. Suzuki et al.: HPC Solutions for the Manufacturing Industry 3. Management load reduction in Figure 3. by System Administrator Portal 3.2 Customization functions This section explains examples of how Monitoring and management targets in a System Administrator Portal can support the system differ from one customer to another, and monitoring and management of HPC systems. there are various needs in terms of Web menus and screen layout. The display modules making 3.1 Functions up System Administrator Portal display only System Administrator Portal is a tool that monitoring information and operation GUIs and enables system administrators to monitor and do not display entire Web pages. It is the role of manage a heterogeneous system composed of POESY to lay out entire pages and embed those different types of computer equipment using a display modules in pages. As shown in Figure 4, uniform view from a Web browser. It provides this embedding can be defined by simple script- functions for displaying running status, manag- ing rules. In short, each display module may be ing power supplies, displaying CPU and memory coded for a specific function, so it helps to save utilization rates, displaying disk utilization development and maintenance costs. rates, managing users, and retrieving job logs. It consists of base software called POESY plus 3.3 Effects of System Administrator Portal tools for collecting information targeted for 1) Intuitive understanding of conditions in monitoring and a group of modules for convert- monitoring functions ing collected information into graphical output In System Administrator Portal, the node included on POESY pages. Here, OS commands running-status displays and trouble-status (ping, sar, and free) are used to collect necessary displays linked with the E-mail notification information as well as middleware (power-supply function described later are useful for enabling management and job scheduler) provided by a system administrator to comprehend problem