Samford University Virtual Supercomputer (SUVS)

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Samford University Virtual Supercomputer(SUVS)

• Brian Toone
• 4/14/09

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Outline

• Motivation
• Concepts
• Demo

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Motivation (in pictures)
4 hours to reach 3 ETA 5½ days
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Motivation (in pictures)
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Motivation (in words)

• Large datasets
• geographic information systems
• bioinformatics
• chemistry
• physics
• environmental modeling
• A single Dell office computer cant handle the
  load, but what if we use more than one?!

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Motivation, contd

• We have a plethora of computers that are idle a
  large majority of the time
• Lets take advantage of the hardware investment
  that has already been made to provide computing
  power to enable research tasks on traditionally
  computationally intractable problems

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Whats the catch?

• Sounds almost too good to be true
• It is and it isnt
• easy providing an environment to connect
  computers together BOINC!
• challenge creating parallel algorithms to run
  on the computing environment
• challenge making it easy for programmers and
  scientists to submit work

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Concepts

• Technical term non-dedicated cluster
• set of computers whose idle time is harnessed to
  process jobs
• individual nodes in the cluster function as
  standalone computers
• in laymens terms lets hook a bunch of lab
  computers together
• Software environment BOINC
• powers many worldwide projects (e.g., SETI_at_home,
  World Community Grid, climateprediction.net,
  etc)
• step-by-step instructions (minus the details) of
  how to build a campus virtual supercomputer

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Can we build a supercomputer?

• Yes with campus-wide buy-in
• Lets start on a smaller scale
• Here we have five computers
• With 5 computers Florida export 1 day
• Adding additional computers is easy(lt5min setup)
• With 40 computers - Florida export in 2 hours

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Usage scenarios

• Simplest scenario
• Non-parallel application with long runtime
• You dont want your office or lab computer tied
  up running the computation
• Solution submit your non-parallel app to the
  cluster using an easy-to-use web interface!

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Usage scenarios

• Build or convert an existing parallel application
• Four components
• Work generator
• The client program
• Result validator
• Result assimilator

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Usage scenarios

• Classroom tool
• networking
• databases
• algorithms and data structures
• parallel computing
• hardware

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Languages supported

• C/C have the best support
• Java
• Any arbitrary executable (with a catch!)

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Demo

• Simple example (embarrassingly parallel)Calculate
  the sum of all the numbers between 1 and
  100,000,000,000
• No modifications necessary to original Java
  program as long as it already reads its starting
  and ending numbers from the command line

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Demo source code

• Java application

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Demo source code, contd

• Work generator

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• Assimilator

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Getting Involved

• Become a beta tester for usage scenario 1(i.e.,
  the web application for uploading an app to run
  on the cluster)
• Suggest a project for collaboration, and I will
  assist in the conversion process

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Thank you!

• More information about the project can be found
  on my faculty web page
• http//faculty.samford.edu/brtoone

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Questions?