In 2006 Junta de Andalucía created the Andalusian Supercomputing Network (RASCI). RASCI
consists of supercomputing nodes distributed geographically throughout Andalusia that provide
the region with a large number of computing resources. Increased network bandwidth, more
powerful computers and acceptance of the Internet have driven a growth in demand for new and
better ways to utilize high-performance technical computing (HPTC) resources

Bosque, David

Cantón, Jorge

Ortega Ramírez, Juan Antonio

Silva, Ana

Velasco Morente, Francisco

idUS. Depósito de Investigación Universidad de Sevilla

ERCIM NEWS 74   July 2008 25The Andalusian Scientific ComputingCentre (CICA) is a supercomputing cen-tre in Andalusia that provides supercom-puting nodes and the Andalusian e-Sci-ence Portal to RASCI (see Figure 1).CICA InfrastructureCurrently, CICA has a distributed clus-ter. It consists of a set of nodes with IntelCore 2 Duo or Intel Quad Core CPUsand 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM, connectedthrough gigabit ethernet. The batch sys-tems installed are the Sun Grid Engine(SGE) and Condor interface. At present,the Web interface application allowsusers to queue their jobs into Condorand SGE for subsequent execution bythe cluster.CICA promotes the use of open-sourcesoftware, and the supercomputing nodesrun under Linux, make use of open-source libraries and utilities, and useseveral OS. The Andalusian Supercomputing Net-work will allow nodes located at differ-ent universities and research centres tobe joined together in a unified comput-ing system. To achieve this, a technicalcommittee (for infrastructure manage-ment), an access committee (for accessmanagement) and a strategic committeehave been established.Other services are offered by CICA tousers of the Andalusian SupercomputingNetwork, including assistance in paral-lelizing applications to take advantageof the Grid infrastructure. This involvesproviding programming courses, expertadvice and consultancy for optimizationand parallelization of applications andthe use of message-passing libraries forthe efficient use of distributed memory.With these services CICA intends toincrease the number of users who canpotentially take advantage of the super-computing infrastructure, rather thanlimiting its use to those who are alreadytechnically proficient (see Figure 2).All of this makes it possible to bringsupercomputing technology to a hetero-geneous community, allowing for fastertechnological progress, and also toincrease the demand for this type ofservice, due to its simplicity of use.Web InterfaceRather than being graphical or accessi-ble through a Web interface, clusterqueue manager interfaces tend to beaccessed through a command line inter-face from a Linux or Windows console. Different interfaces have been devel-oped for the Condor queue manager,each with a specific purpose dependingDesign of a Functional Architecture for the Management of Cluster Resources and Services through the Webby Juan Antonio Ortega, Jorge Cantón, Ana Silva, David Bosque and Francisco Velasco In 2006 Junta de Andalucía created the Andalusian Supercomputing Network  (RASCI).  RASCIconsists of supercomputing nodes distributed geographically throughout Andalusia that providethe region with a large number of computing resources. Increased network bandwidth, morepowerful computers and acceptance of the Internet have driven a growth in demand for new andbetter ways to utilize high-performance technical computing (HPTC) resources.Figure 1: CICA connections.Figure 2: Supercomputing infrastructure.SupercomputingNodesStorageDistributedClusterNetworksWeb InterfaceStandard MemoryServerStorageSun ClusterSGE Condor TorqueCondorSGETorqueTareasSGETareasTorqueTareasDistributedClusterStandard MemoryServer Shared MemoryServersRASCI RICACICA UMA UGRERCIM NEWS 74   July 2008  26Special Theme: Supercomputing at Work  on who is making use of it. One of theservices to which this queue manager'sdevelopers have contributed is the useof Web services (SOAP-WSDL). For itsimplementation they have developedthe BirdBath package, which, by meansof WSDL calls, allows jobs in the clus-ter to be submitted and managed. Themain inconvenience presented by thesecalls is the ease of discovery and index-ation by search engine Web crawlers,since they are accessible though URLs.They can thus be found and storedthrough search engines. Moreover, themanagement capabilities are limited tothe functionalities implemented byBirdBath developers.The architecture presented by theCICA-named Cluster Looking Class(CLG) allows the user to make use ofresources through the Web, eliminatingthe need to enter commands through acommand line console. This ease of useextends the reach of computing servicesto a greater number of users as a techni-cal profile is no longer required. Atpresent, this interface is operational atthe Andalusian e-Science Portal, givingregistered users access to computationalresources connected to the AndalusianComputing scientific Network (RICA)and Andalusian Supercomputing Net-work (RASCI). However, with the ability to access thesystem through the Web, securitybecomes a critical aspect. In a systemsuch as this, the high level of comput-ing power turns it into a very powerfultool for illicit uses such as brute-forcepassword cracking. In order to avoidthis problem, CLG defines both a logi-cal and a physical architecture thatallows the user to manage and submitjobs and to receive their results,uncoupling the physical architecture ofthe cluster from the Web interface andthus putting an end to security prob-lems.Further WorkIn the future, the supercomputingresources of CICA will grow and willbe included in this infrastructure. Ourestimation is that this will lead to biggermassive storage, shared memoryservers, more distributed nodes andnew batch systems.Links: Andalusian e-Science portal:https://eciencia.cica.esCondor Project HTC:http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condorPlease contact: Juan Antonio Ortega Centro Informático Científico deAndalucía, Spain E-mail: ortega@cica.esArray processing is a good candidate forincreasing computing power by usingparallel computation. Additionally, itcan help to solve architectural problems(eg distribution of control signals on achip). The effectiveness of implementa-tions is measured by a set of parameters,namely by the silicon area (A), execu-tion time (T), dissipated power (P), con-sumed energy (E) and number ofinput/output pins (#I/O).A number of different implementationsof array processors are commerciallyavailable. In this project we have mainlyconcentrated on the topographic IBMCell heterogeneous array processorarchitecture, because its developmentenvironment is open source and wewished to compare the results withthose from our previous FPGA (fieldprogrammable gate array)-based imple-mentations.The Cell Broadband Engine Architec-ture (CBEA) is designed to achievehigh-performance computing with bet-ter area/performance and power/per-formance ratios than the conventionalmulti-core architectures. The CBEAdefines a heterogeneous multi-proces-sor architecture where general-purposeprocessors called Power Processor Ele-ments (PPE), and Single InstructionMultiple Data (SIMD) processorscalled Synergistic Processor Elements(SPE), are connected via a high-speedon-chip coherent bus called an ElementInterconnect Bus (EIB). The CBEAarchitecture is flexible and the ratio ofthe different elements can be definedaccording to the requirements of differ-ent applications. The first implementa-tion of the CBEA is the Cell BroadbandEngine (Cell BE or informally Cell)designed for the Sony PlayStation 3game console, which contains one PPEand eight SPEs.In this work we have concentrated onan efficient CNN implementation onthe Cell architecture. The basic CNNsimulation kernel was successfullyimplemented on the Cell BE, and bothlinear and nonlinear CNN arrays can besimulated. The kernel was optimizedaccording to the special requirements ofExploitation of Cell Multi-Processor Array in Solution of Spatio-Temporal Dynamics by Zoltán Nagy, László Kék, Zoltán Kincses, András Kiss and Péter SzolgayArray computers can be useful in the numerical solution of spatio-temporal problems. IBM hasrecently introduced a topographic array processor called the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE).Researchers at the Cellular Sensory Wave Computers Laboratory of SZTAKI in collaboration with theDepartment of Information Technology, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest and theDepartment of Image Processing and Neurocomputing, Pannon University, Veszprém, haveimplemented a Cellular Neural Network (CNN) simulation kernel on the Cell BE. The CNN simulationis optimized according to the special requirements of the Cell BE and implements both linear andnonlinear (piecewise linear) templates. We have used the CNN simulation kernel to solve Navier-Stokes partial differential equations (PDEs) on the Cell architecture.

Design of a Functional Architecture for the Management of Cluster Resources and Services through the Web

https://idus.us.es/xmlui/bitstream/11441/44504/1/design%20of%20a%20functional%20architecture%20for%20the%20management.pdf

Design of a Functional Architecture for the Management of Cluster Resources and Services through the Web

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