Virtualizing the Stampede2 Supercomputer with Applications to HPC in the Cloud

Methods developed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are described and demonstrated for automating the construction of an elastic, virtual cluster emulating the Stampede2 high performance computing (HPC) system. The cluster can be built and/or scaled in a matter of minutes on the Jetstream self-service cloud system and shares many properties of the original Stampede2, including: i) common identity management, ii) access to the same file systems, iii) equivalent software application stack and module system, iv) similar job scheduling interface via Slurm. We measure time-to-solution for a number of common scientific applications on our virtual cluster against equivalent runs on Stampede2 and develop an application profile where performance is similar or otherwise acceptable. For such applications, the virtual cluster provides an effective form of "cloud bursting" with the potential to significantly improve overall turnaround time, particularly when Stampede2 is experiencing long queue wait times. In addition, the virtual cluster can be used for test and debug without directly impacting Stampede2. We conclude with a discussion of how science gateways can leverage the TACC Jobs API web service to incorporate this cloud bursting technique transparently to the end user.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Quantifying Shannon's Work Function for Cryptanalytic Attacks

Attacks on cryptographic systems are limited by the available computational resources. A theoretical understanding of these resource limitations is needed to evaluate the security of cryptographic primitives and procedures. This study uses an Attacker versus Environment game formalism based on computability logic to quantify Shannon's work function and evaluate resource use in cryptanalysis. A simple cost function is defined which allows to quantify a wide range of theoretical and real computational resources. With this approach the use of custom hardware, e.g., FPGA boards, in cryptanalysis can be analyzed. Applied to real cryptanalytic problems, it raises, for instance, the expectation that the computer time needed to break some simple 90 bit strong cryptographic primitives might theoretically be less than two years.Comment: 19 page

Studying Security Issues in HPC (Super Computer) Environment

HPC has evolved from being a buzzword to becoming one of the most exciting areas in the field of Information Technology & Computer Science. Organizations are increasingly looking to HPC to improve operational efficiency, reduce expenditure over time and improve the computational power. Using Super Computers hosted on a particular location and connected with the Internet can reduce the installation of computational power and making it centralise. However, centralise system has some advantages and disadvantages over the distributed system, but we avoid discussing those issues and focusing more on the HPC systems. HPC can also be used to build web and file server and for applications of cloud computing. Due to cluster type architecture and high processing speed, we have experienced that it works far better and handles the loads in much more efficient manner then series of desktop with normal configuration connected together for application of cloud computing and network applications. In this paper we have discussed on issues re lated to security of data and information on the context of HPC. Data and information are vanurable to security and safety. It is the purpose of this paper to present some practical security issues related to High Performance Computing Environment. Based on our observation on security requirements of HPC we have discuss some existing security technologies used in HPC. When observed to various literatures, we found that the existing techniques are not enough. We have discussed, some of the key issues relating to this context. Lastly, we have made an approach to find an appropriate solution using Blowfish encryption and decryption algorithm. We hope that, with our proposed concepts, HPC applications to perform better and in safer way. At the end, we have proposed a modified blow fish algorithmic technique by attaching random number generator algorithm to make the encryption decryption technique more appropriate for our own HPC environment