Distributed computing testbed for a remote experimental environment

Collaboration is increasing as physics research becomes concentrated on a few large, expensive facilities, particularly in magnetic fusion energy research, with national and international participation. These facilities are designed for steady state operation and interactive, real-time experimentation. We are developing tools to provide for the establishment of geographically distant centers for interactive operations; such centers would allow scientists to participate in experiments from their home institutions. A testbed is being developed for a Remote Experimental Environment (REE), a ``Collaboratory.`` The testbed will be used to evaluate the ability of a remotely located group of scientists to conduct research on the DIII-D Tokamak at General Atomics. The REE will serve as a testing environment for advanced control and collaboration concepts applicable to future experiments. Process-to-process communications over high speed wide area networks provide real-time synchronization and exchange of data among multiple computer networks, while the ability to conduct research is enhanced by adding audio/video communication capabilities. The Open Software Foundation`s Distributed Computing Environment is being used to test concepts in distributed control, security, naming, remote procedure calls and distributed file access using the Distributed File Services. We are exploring the technology and sociology of remotely participating in the operation of a large scale experimental facility

Remote collaboration and data access at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility

As the number of on-site and remote collaborators has increased, the demands on the DIII-D National Program`s computational infrastructure has become more severe. The Director of the DIII-D Program recognized the increased importance of computers in carrying out the DIII-D mission and in late 1997 formed the Data Analysis Programming Group. Utilizing both software and hardware improvements, this new group has been charged with increasing the DIII-D data analysis throughput and data retrieval rate. Understanding the importance of the remote collaborators, this group has developed a long term plan that will allow for fast 24 hour data access (7x24) with complete documentation and a set of data viewing and analysis tools that can be run either on the collaborators` or DIII-D`s computer systems. This paper presents the group`s long term plan and progress to date

A National Collaboratory to Advance the Science of High Temperature Plasma Physics for Magnetic Fusion

This report summarizes the work of the National Fusion Collaboratory (NFC) Project to develop a persistent infrastructure to enable scientific collaboration for magnetic fusion research. The original objective of the NFC project was to develop and deploy a national FES Grid (FusionGrid) that would be a system for secure sharing of computation, visualization, and data resources over the Internet. The goal of FusionGrid was to allow scientists at remote sites to participate as fully in experiments and computational activities as if they were working on site thereby creating a unified virtual organization of the geographically dispersed U.S. fusion community. The vision for FusionGrid was that experimental and simulation data, computer codes, analysis routines, visualization tools, and remote collaboration tools are to be thought of as network services. In this model, an application service provider (ASP provides and maintains software resources as well as the necessary hardware resources. The project would create a robust, user-friendly collaborative software environment and make it available to the US FES community. This Grid's resources would be protected by a shared security infrastructure including strong authentication to identify users and authorization to allow stakeholders to control their own resources. In this environment, access to services is stressed rather than data or software portability

Contribution to fusion research from IAEA coordinated research projects and joint experiments

The paper presents objectives and activities of IAEA Coordinated Research Projects 'Conceptual development of steady-state compact fusion neutron sources' and 'Utilisation of a network of small magnetic confinement fusion devices for mainstream fusion research'. The background and main projects of the CRP on FNS are described in detail, as this is a new activity at IAEA. Recent activities of the second CRP, which continues activities of previous CRPs, are overviewed

Data Analysis Software Tools for Enhanced Collaboration at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility

Data analysis at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility is simplified by the use of two software packages in analysis codes. The first is GAP1otObj, an IDL-based object-oriented library used in visualization tools for dynamic plotting. GAPlotObj gives users the ability to manipulate graphs directly through mouse and keyboard-driven commands. The second software package is MDSplus, which is used at DIED as a central repository for analyzed data. GAPlotObj and MDSplus reduce the effort required for a collaborator to become familiar with the DIII-D analysis environment by providing uniform interfaces for data display and retrieval. Two visualization tools at DIII-D that benefit from them are ReviewPlus and EFITviewer. ReviewPlus is capable of displaying interactive 2D and 3D graphs of raw, analyzed, and simulation code data. EFITviewer is used to display results from the EFIT analysis code together with kinetic profiles and machine geometry. Both bring new possibilities for data exploration to the user, and are able to plot data from any fusion research site with an MDSplus data server

Development of improved methods for remote access of DIII-D data and data analysis

The DIII-D tokamak is a national fusion research facility. There is an increasing need to access data from remote sites in order to facilitate data analysis by collaborative researchers at remote locations, both nationally and internationally. In the past, this has usually been done by remotely logging into computers at the DIII-D site. With the advent of faster networking and powerful computers at remote sites, it is becoming possible to access and analyze data from anywhere in the world as if the remote user were actually at the DIII-D site. The general mechanism for accessing DIII-D data has always been via the PTDATA subroutine. Substantial enhancements are being made to that routine to make it more useful in a non-local environment. In particular, a caching mechanism is being built into PTDATA to make network data access more efficient. Studies are also being made of using Distributed File System (DFS) disk storage in a Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). A data server has been created that will migrate, on request, shot data from the DIII-D environment into the DFS environment

INTERNATIONAL ENERGY RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURES: MAPPING THE GLOBAL LANDSCAPE OF ENERGY RIS (RISCAPE): Based on Finland Futures Research Centre’s contribution to the Horizon 2020 project European Research Infrastructures in the International Landscape (RISCAPE)

This e-book is an expanded version of the Energy Domain Report originally written for the project European Research Infrastructures in the International Landscape (RISCAPE), funded by the European Union. The domain report is also available in a shorter version, as well as a single chapter in the consolidated common project report. The full project report by Asmi et al. (2019) is available at https://riscape.eu/riscape-report/ The book is structured into three main parts. First, a preface introduces the report and highlights the field of Research Infrastructures (RIs) in connection with Futures Research. RIs are facilities that provide resources and services for research communities to conduct research and foster innovation. Due to our long history of researching energy futures, Finland Futures Research Centre led the mapping process of energy RIs The second part of this e-book presents an expanded version of the RISCAPE Energy Domain Report with its mapping of international Energy Research Infrastructures. The final list of mapped international energy RIs contains 37 organizations. The third and last part of this e-book consists of a postface and discussion on methodological considerations that can be useful for conducting similar mapping analyses in the future