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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
INTERVIEW WITH SDSC'S FRAN
BERMAN
By Alan Beck, Editor-in-Chief, GRIDtoday
Q: How would you characterize your satisfaction with the current level of
TeraGrid progress?
BERMAN: I am pleased with the current level of TeraGrid progress. It is
addressing just exactly the kind of difficult issues in the construction of
its hardware, software and user environment that it should.
TeraGrid is an ambitious project. Everything about it pushes the envelope:
the
innovative storage solution, the size and coordination of the clusters, the
speed of the network, the level of scale for software integration, the level
of integration of operations to provide a uniform environment for users, etc.
The TeraGrid team has learned an amazing amount over the last two years about
putting together a national, coordinated, production Grid infrastructure. The
project has bridged boundaries between many traditionally independent groups:
production staff and development staff, applications developers and
infrastructure developers, NSF centers, DOE and NSF, etc., and the
cross-institution working groups are working together very effectively. We've
all learned a huge amount on the project and are making very good progress
towards project goals.
Q: How are you engaging mainstream corporate America (non-HPC-vendors that
is)
into supercomputing?
BERMAN: SDSC's mission is to innovate, develop and use technology to
advance
science. In particular, HPC is just one of many technologies that can be
brought to bear to enable science and engineering advances and discoveries.
SDSC science collaborators need a wide spectrum of resources and services from
persistent data management, to capable tools for desktop visualization, to
help with targeting simulations and other codes to terascale-level
supercomputers. SDSC partners with many vendors who are not necessarily
involved in HPC. We find that it's often the case that non-HPC technologies
are integrated with HPC technologies to provide end-to-end support.
Q: How much of SDSC's funding comes from PACI?
BERMAN: Currently, about half of SDSC's funding comes from PACI. Much of
our
funding does come from NSF. Last year, SDSC participated in four out of seven
large-scale ITRs as a core technology or IT infrastructure provider. This
year, SDSC is participating in two out of eight large-scale ITRs. In general,
our funding is for the technology or IT infrastructure component of integrated
science and technology efforts. For example, last year's ITR awards include
creating modern cyberinfrastructure frameworks for earth and ecological
sciences (GEON and SEEK) and this year's ITRs include creating IT
infrastructure to enable exploration of the evolutionary relationships between
all species of living organisms in the "Tree of Life." Such projects are
helping us develop and provide critical infrastructure to enable integration
of data across scale and time-frame as well as supporting large-scale analysis
and simulation.
Q: Peter Freeman has noted that PACI funding will go away; big changes in
PACI
are coming, but no one seems to know what they are. What are you doing to
ensure SDSC beyond PACI?
BERMAN: SDSC has been applying the "Gretzky Rule": "Skate to where the puck
will be." We think the puck will be an integrated Cyberinfrastructure vision
of science, technology and educational activities. For the last two years,
SDSC staff have been working hard to develop the skills most needed for
Cyberinfrastructure and have gained a large amount of practical experience
through the design and development of domain-oriented infrastructure,
large-scale Grid efforts and deep science collaborations. Projects like GEON,
BIRN and SEEK (building geosciences, biology and ecology Grid
infrastructures), the TeraGrid/ETF, NPACI Grid and PRAGMA projects (giving us
experience with "top-down," "bottom-up," and international Grid
infrastructures), and other efforts have helped SDSC staff build deep
understanding and experience with core components of Grid technologies and
Cyberinfrastructure. We have also been exploring deeper partnerships with both
users and the commercial sector. We joke that we're "living the dream" of
Cyberinfrastructure at SDSC, but I think in a fundamental sense, that's really
true.
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