Advancing Research Computing on Campus and Beyond

Biography Dr. Dana Brunson is Director of the High Performance Computing Center and is an adjunct associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University (OSU). She earned her Ph.D. in Numerical Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and her M.S. and B.S. in Mathematics from OSU. program Dana is co-lead of the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (OneOCII) and is a member of the XSEDE Campus Champion leadership team.The demand for computational resources, support, and expertise among the academic community continues to grow with each passing year and can quickly surpass an institution's capacity to meet researchers' needs. The return on investment in these resources can lag behind the initial investment causing challenges in developing an institutional commitment for funding centralized highly available cyberinfrastructure. In this session, we will discuss the approach taken at OSU to develop these resources utilizing external funding, cooperation and collaboration with others, and attention to specific needs of the campus community.University of Oklahoma - http://ou.eduOneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (OneOCII) - http://www.oneocii.okepscor.org/OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER) - http://www.oscer.ou.eduOklahoma State University - http://okstate.eduN

Cowboy Up

Dana Brunson is Director of the High Performance Computing Center and is an adjunct associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Before transitioning to High Performance Computing in the fall of 2007, she taught mathematics and served as systems administrator for the OSU Mathematics Department. She earned her Ph.D. in Numerical Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and her M.S. and B.S. in Mathematics from OSU. In addition, Dana is serving on the ad hoc committee for OSU's new Bioinformatics Graduate Certificate program and is the XSEDE Campus Champion for OSUPresented at the Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2012, October 3, 2012.The OSU High Performance Computing Center is deploying Cowboy, the largest externally funded supercomputer in state history. This talk will present the highlights of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) proposal, data center expansion, cluster design and deployment, as well as how OSUHPCC is facilitating computational and data intensive research and education.The University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma Supercomputing for Education and Research Oklahoma State University Information TechnologyN

Community Funding Models for Computational Resources

As scientific research has extended far beyond the practicality and abilities of laboratory experiments, computational simulations have become the mainstay of enabling and furthering the research in a way never previously thought possible. It is becoming commonplace to model and simulate both the very large, such as black hole collisions in astrophysics, and the very small, such as subatomic particle behavior and interaction in high energy physics. In addition to the previous examples detailing extremes, practically every area of research currently utilizes and benefits from computational resources to simulate their work; financial modeling, weather forecasting, geological phenomena, geo-spatial data analysis, gene sequencing...the list is practically without end. Until recently, many researchers have had compute clusters in closets for which they must devote time and money for its housing and management. Many institutions are gradually adopting central research or high performance computing centers to reduce the overall cost to the university and researchers in deploying and maintaining research computing resources. These centers also help the university attract more computational researchers as well as garner more external funding by demonstrating their commitment to providing these facilities. While it would not be difficult to argue the worth of computational resources in the realm of academic research, a common sustainable funding model for such resources is strangely absent from the overall picture. One such model that is becoming a frequent topic of discussion in academic circles is the condominium model

OneOklahoma Friction Free Network (OFFN) (PPT)

This session presents a stage model that describes the ongoing deployment of a Science DMZ known as the OneOklahoma Friction Free Network (OFFN) in order to guide multi-campus collaborations on their journey to a robust cyberinfrastructure model. This session defines implementation stages and describes the deliverables, benefits, challenges, best practices, and metrics for each stage. The results of the initial implementations are expected to show that metrics including speed, stack size, context switching, signal deliveries, and socket message traffic is improved and latency and errors including page faults are reduced. It is hoped that this model will serve as a sustainable model for EPSCoR states hoping to maximize research efficiency and minimize risk in their engagement of statewide research interests.N

Trusted CI Experiences in Cybersecurity and Service to Open Science

This article describes experiences and lessons learned from the Trusted CI project, funded by the US National Science Foundation to serve the community as the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. Trusted CI is an effort to address cybersecurity for the open science community through a single organization that provides leadership, training, consulting, and knowledge to that community. The article describes the experiences and lessons learned of Trusted CI regarding both cybersecurity for open science and managing the process of providing centralized services to a broad and diverse community.Comment: 8 pages, PEARC '19: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 28-August 1, 2019, Chicago, IL, US

Trusted CI: PEARC19 Workshop

The Trusted CI Workshop on Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure provides an opportunity for sharing experiences, recommendations, and available resources for addressing cybersecurity challenges in research computing. Presentations by Trusted CI staff and community members will cover a broad range of cybersecurity topics, including science gateways, transition to practice, cybersecurity program development, workforce development, and community engagement (e.g., via the Trusted CI Fellows program). Visit https://trustedci.org/pearc19 for a listing of all Trusted CI activities at PEARC19. The workshop was held on Tuesday July 30th.NSF #1547272Ope

The OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative: A Model for Multi-institutional Collaboration

The OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative: A Model for Multi-institutional Collaboration A White Paper submitted by the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative membership to the National Science Foundation Workshop on The Role of Regional Organizations in Improving Access to the National Computational Infrastructure The OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (OneOCII) is a statewide all-inclusive advanced digital services collaboration that has been providing access to Cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources, as well as expertise and education, so far to over 100 institutions and organizations statewide (over 50 academic and almost 50 non-academic), including PhD-granting universities, primarily undergraduate institutions, community colleges, career techs and high schools, among them 10 Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).The OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative OneOCIIN

OSU High Performance Computing Center Newsletter (Summer 2015)

HPCC GRANT AND PUBLICATION WRITING Writing a grant? We can help! We have boilerplates for facilities and service sections that can help take the stress off of you. Please contact us if you require assistance, and we can provide documentation to support your efforts. The High Performance Computing Center exists to facilitate research, development and test activities. Please remember to always acknowledge use of OSU’s High Performance Computing center resources and/or personnel in publications. For a quick reference guide for acknowledging please visit the Acknowledging page on our website. Don’t forget to email [email protected] for inclusion in our publication listings. COMPUTATIONAL OPTIMIZATION – BY BASKI BALASUNDARAM Dr. Balasundaram is an Associate Professor (http://baski.okstate.edu/) in the School of Industrial Engineering & Management (IEM) who specializes in computational optimization, specifically with network models and graph theoretic approaches. His basic research focuses on the development of theory and algorithms to solve combinatorial optimization problems that are motivated by graph-based data mining, social network analysis, computational biology, and other fields. The problems he studies range from seeking specific patterns or substructures in networks to designing networks to have optimal structural properties like robustness and reachability. Even when the structural properties or patterns are simple to describe, the resulting optimization problems are often computationally intractable requiring an intelligent use of decomposition techniques in algorithm design, and the power of high performance parallel computing to solve. Dr. Balasundaram and several other faculty from IEM that work broadly in the field of Operations Research, with help from OSU HPCC acquired cluster “Cimarron.” This large- memory cluster consists 10 compute nodes with dual quad core Intel E5620 processors, 6 of which have 96 GB RAM and 4 have 144 GB RAM. The cluster also hosts high-performance optimization packages like CPLEX and Gurobi. Since his research often employs worst-case exponential algorithms, such high-memory nodes and parallel computing are particularly advantageous to his group’s research, enabling optimal resolution on massive power-law networks with several million nodes that were previously unsolved.OSU High Performance Computing Center - https://hpcc.okstate.edu/content/about-osu-hpc

OSU High Performance Computing Center Newsletter (Spring 2015)

ACKNOWLEDGING THE HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING CENTER The High Performance Computing Center exists to facilitate research, development and test activities. Our best measurement of continued needs and benefits remains publications, dissertations and grants facilitated by the users of our resources. Please remember to always acknowledge use of OSU’s High Performance Computing center resources and/or personnel in publications. For a quick reference guide for acknowledging please visit the Acknowledging page on our website. Don’t forget to email [email protected] to inclusion in our publication listings. For a list of all the extensive list of facilitated publications the HPCC has helped contribute to in the past visit the Scholarly Publications page on our website. COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY – BY CHRISTOPHER FENNELL Hired to the faculty in the OSU Chemistry Department in 2013, Dr. Fennell specializes in molecular simulation of condensed phase systems. His research involves characterizing the driving forces for molecular transfer, association, and solvation. Uncovering the whys behind the collective behavior of molecules in complex systems provides critical knowledge and power for rational design of targeted therapeutics, materials with specific physical properties, and self-organizing and assembling systems. Tackling problems in complex molecular systems requires extensive sampling of system states. Fortunately, molecular mechanics simulations lend themselves quite well to parallel computing environments. As part of Dr. Fennell coming to OSU, he purchased a subsystem of compute nodes that were recently integrated into the Cowboy Cluster. In addition to 24 CPU cores, these nodes each contain four Intel Xeon Phi cards. Each Phi card contains 228 simultaneous multithreading pipelines, and this hardware provides new capabilities that are not available on standard Cowboy compute nodes. When used fully, these Phi nodes can give upwards of a 1000-fold improvement in performance over a single core calculation. OSU HPCC supports researchers that want to take advantage of this newly available compute hardware.Oklahoma State University High Performance Computing Center - https://hpcc.okstate.edu