Science Support for Phase 4

Dr Alan D Simpson

HPCx Project DirectorEPCC Technical Director

2November 2008HPCx User Group

Overview

• User Support Team

• Phase 4

• Complementary Capability Computing

• Science Support

3November 2008HPCx User Group

User Support Team

• Now fully staffed• Liz Sim: User Support Manager started mid-April

– Initially worked in software engineering– 8 years experience in Service Support– Commercial background at Sun and Computer

Sciences Corporation (CSC) supporting internal & external clients

• Andy Turner: started in July– Background in Computational Chemistry research– Support and training on Chemistry cluster

• Irina Nazarova– 12 years at EPCC– Expertise in web, reporting and publicity

4November 2008HPCx User Group

Phase 4 Overview

• EPSRC are funding a 14-month extension to HPCx– New end-date January 2010

• Upgrade to Power 5+– Reduced running costs (power and

maintenance)

• Decreasing science support activity

• Focus on Complementary Capability Computing– Learn about exploiting multiple services

5November 2008HPCx User Group

Hardware Upgrade

• Planned as part of Phase 4

• Cluster of 120 IBM System p5 Model 575+ servers– Each node contains 16 * 1.9GHz processors– 118 nodes will be equipped with 32Gb memory – Remaining 2 nodes (32 processors) will have 128Gb

memory to permit large memory jobs

• Minimal downtime expected– No change to front-ends, switches or filesystems

• More details in IBM Talk

6November 2008HPCx User Group

Complementary Capability Computing• Maximise benefits from HECToR and HPCx

– For benefit of UK computational research

• Workshop on Complementary Capability proposal– Simple transfer of resources

• Agreed and advertised– Advance booking

• Now working– Queues for long jobs on HPCx

• Increasingly popular– Short debugging queues on HPCx

• >1000 jobs per month

7November 2008HPCx User Group

Complementarity Challenge Call• EPSRC Call raised in line with the decision to

extend the HPCx service into 2010– Focus on complementary capability computing– 12 month grants available starting January 2009– Call ran from 30th July to 11th Sep 2008

• 11 technical assessments have been completed and returned to prospective applicants– HPCx time totalling around 30 million AUs has

been requested as a result of this call

• Funding decisions due in 2008

8November 2008HPCx User Group

Phase 4 Staffing

• Number of Science Support staff tapers down throughout Phase 4– to keep total cost of extension as low as possible

• Have agreed with EPSRC that this profile is flexible– responding to user needs

• Key target will be to provide support for Complementarity Challenge projects

2008 1Q09 2Q09 3Q09 4Q09FTEs 11 8 6 4 2

9November 2008HPCx User Group

Principles of Science Support

• No formal Annual Plan– Allowing focus on responsive support

• Helpdesk will remain the key element of support throughout Phase 4

• Reduced effort available for – Training: only if leveraged with other activities– Technical Reports: to aid understanding of

Complementarity and future services– Terascaling: modest effort e.g., in support of

Complementary Challenge projects

10November 2008HPCx User Group

Support for Complementarity

• Key justification for Phase 4 was exploring novel methods of exploiting HPC systems– Help EPSRC plan for future services

• Most of Science Support effort will be targeted towards this

• New support team: Complementarity– Led by Alan Gray

• Please contact us if you may want such support– support@hpcx.ac.uk