PSC and the TeraGrid

Within the TeraGrid, PSC has taken leadership responsibility in user services and cyber-security, as well as emphasizing capability computing, the ability to tackle the computationally most demanding problems.

PSC operates two high performance computing resources in TeraGrid: BigBen, a Cray XT3 MPP system consisting of 2068 2.6-GHz dual-core AMD Opteron compute processors linked by a custom-designed interconnect, and Pople, an SMP resource. PSC provides TeraGrid users access to its archival storage system through standard TeraGrid tools such as gridftp and SRB.

Recent PSC work in support of TeraGrid includes:

  • Securing Community Accounts: In a major effort, PSC implemented a security model, adapted from NCSA-developed software, that reconciles the community-wide reach of TeraGrid Science Gateways with the secure environment of a large-scale system. TeraGrid sites are consulting with PSC for details they can emulate.
  • CTSS Compliance: CTSS is a set of software packages and settings that provides a default user environment for the user so that a basic set of activities and operations can be done in a consistent fashion on any TeraGrid computational resource. PSC supports CTSS on each of its computing resources.
  • Networking: The TeraGrid Data Working Group recommended that all TeraGrid sites deploy HPN-SSH, a security protocol for network communications with performance enhancements. PSC.s network staff added "multi-threading" to OpenSSH.s encryption operations, resulting in 40-percent speedup in transfer rate. PSC staff also deployed a TeraGrid version of its NPAD diagnostic service, co-developed with NCAR, which analyzes and diagnoses network path-failures on TeraGrid.s network-monitoring computers.
  • Speedpage: PSC staff updated "speedpage", a PSC-created TeraGrid resource that measures file-transfer performance among TeraGrid sites. This includes a naming convention that PSC staff designed and shepherded into place. PSC has migrated speedpage to a new PSC information server, where it will perform better and share its database with other performance-measurement tools.
  • File Systems: Experienced in file systems across a range of architectures, PSC staff worked with Indiana University to implement the flexible, open-source Lustre-WAN file system, deployed on PSC.s TeraGrid resources, on test machines at Indiana. Performance in writing data between PSC and Indiana is only 20-percent reduced compared to similarly configured local file systems.

PSC serves the education, outreach, and training communities through leadership at national and international conferences. PSC also provides presenters to the TeraGrid Speakers Bureau to address topics of interest to TeraGrid users and other scientific, academic, and K-12 groups across the country.

The TeraGrid, sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure, is a partnership of people, resources and services that enables discovery in U.S. science and engineering. Through coordinated policy, grid software, and high-performance network connections, the TeraGrid integrates a distributed set of high-capability computational, data-management and visualization resources to make research more productive. With Science Gateway collaborations and education programs, the TeraGrid also connects and broadens scientific communities.