The role of graphics super-workstations in a supercomputing environment

A new class of very powerful workstations has recently become available which integrate near supercomputer computational performance with very powerful and high quality graphics capability. These graphics super-workstations are expected to play an increasingly important role in providing an enhanced environment for supercomputer users. Their potential uses include: off-loading the supercomputer (by serving as stand-alone processors, by post-processing of the output of supercomputer calculations, and by distributed or shared processing), scientific visualization (understanding of results, communication of results), and by real time interaction with the supercomputer (to steer an iterative computation, to abort a bad run, or to explore and develop new algorithms)

Start-Up Costs in American Research Universities

Our report briefly summarizes findings from the 2002 Cornell Higher Education Research Institute survey of start-up costs at the over 220 universities classified as Research and Doctoral universities by the Carnegie Foundation in 1994. It reports the mean start-up cost packages across institutions for new assistant professors and senior faculty, broken down by institutional type (public/private), Carnegie classification and field (biology, chemistry, engineering, physics and astronomy) and also discuses the sources of funding for start-up costs

Working Papers: Astronomy and Astrophysics Panel Reports

The papers of the panels appointed by the Astronomy and Astrophysics survey Committee are compiled. These papers were advisory to the survey committee and represent the opinions of the members of each panel in the context of their individual charges. The following subject areas are covered: radio astronomy, infrared astronomy, optical/IR from ground, UV-optical from space, interferometry, high energy from space, particle astrophysics, theory and laboratory astrophysics, solar astronomy, planetary astronomy, computing and data processing, policy opportunities, benefits to the nation from astronomy and astrophysics, status of the profession, and science opportunities

Anomaly Detection using Autoencoders in High Performance Computing Systems

Anomaly detection in supercomputers is a very difficult problem due to the big scale of the systems and the high number of components. The current state of the art for automated anomaly detection employs Machine Learning methods or statistical regression models in a supervised fashion, meaning that the detection tool is trained to distinguish among a fixed set of behaviour classes (healthy and unhealthy states). We propose a novel approach for anomaly detection in High Performance Computing systems based on a Machine (Deep) Learning technique, namely a type of neural network called autoencoder. The key idea is to train a set of autoencoders to learn the normal (healthy) behaviour of the supercomputer nodes and, after training, use them to identify abnormal conditions. This is different from previous approaches which where based on learning the abnormal condition, for which there are much smaller datasets (since it is very hard to identify them to begin with). We test our approach on a real supercomputer equipped with a fine-grained, scalable monitoring infrastructure that can provide large amount of data to characterize the system behaviour. The results are extremely promising: after the training phase to learn the normal system behaviour, our method is capable of detecting anomalies that have never been seen before with a very good accuracy (values ranging between 88% and 96%).Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Workshop proceedings: Information Systems for Space Astrophysics in the 21st Century, volume 1

The Astrophysical Information Systems Workshop was one of the three Integrated Technology Planning workshops. Its objectives were to develop an understanding of future mission requirements for information systems, the potential role of technology in meeting these requirements, and the areas in which NASA investment might have the greatest impact. Workshop participants were briefed on the astrophysical mission set with an emphasis on those missions that drive information systems technology, the existing NASA space-science operations infrastructure, and the ongoing and planned NASA information systems technology programs. Program plans and recommendations were prepared in five technical areas: Mission Planning and Operations; Space-Borne Data Processing; Space-to-Earth Communications; Science Data Systems; and Data Analysis, Integration, and Visualization

An assessment of the connection machine

The CM-2 is an example of a connection machine. The strengths and problems of this implementation are considered as well as important issues in the architecture and programming environment of connection machines in general. These are contrasted to the same issues in Multiple Instruction/Multiple Data (MIMD) microprocessors and multicomputers

Saving all the bits

The scientific tradition of saving all the data from experiments for independent validation and for further investigation is under profound challenge by modern satellite data collectors and by supercomputers. The volume of data is beyond the capacity to store, transmit, and comprehend the data. A promising line of study is discovery machines that study the data at the collection site and transmit statistical summaries of patterns observed. Examples of discovery machines are the Autoclass system and the genetic memory system of NASA-Ames, and the proposal for knowbots by Kahn and Cerf

Financing Higher Education Institutions in the 21st Century

[Excerpt] My remarks today relate to the “Financing of American Higher Education Institutions in the 21st Century”. Although the discussion has some implications for the ability of students and their families to finance college educations, my focus is on institutions of higher education, not on students. I will begin by discussing the growing resource imbalance that is emerging between public and private institutions and then the growing inequality of resources across institutions that is occurring within each of the public and private sectors. As I do this, I will illustrate the implications of some of these changes for the patterns of faculty compensation and faculty turnover that we observe across academic institutions. I will then turn to a discussion of the growing importance of scientific research to universities and the growing costs that universities are incurring for this research. The enormous costs of scientific research are increasingly being born by the institutions themselves and institutions need to understand who actually bears the burden of these costs. Institutions increasingly are hoping that they will generate revenue to support their research enterprise through the commercialization of their faculty members’ research findings, but I shall show that currently very few institutions are generating substantial funding from their commercialization activities. Finally, if time permits, I will conclude with some speculations about the directions in which our American higher education system will evolve over the next few decades and what some of the major financial issues facing academic institutions will prove to be. Much of my discussion draws on research that I have been conducting jointly with a wonderful group of undergraduate and graduate students associated with the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and my great debt to them for help in preparing these remarks will be obvious to you

Engineering innovation and industrial development

Nigeria remains underdeveloped fifty two years after colonial rule exporting primary raw materials and depending on imports of everything including even the debasing second hand goods. This paper examines the capacity of engineering innovation to transform the economy. Approach of successive governments was analyzed. A linkage was traced between engineering innovation industrialization and the nation’s well-being. We conclude that power and the attitude of the people affect engineering innovation and industrial development