“Stream”-lining the Scientific Process at XSEDE

By Travis Tate, XSEDE Communications Coordinator

July 28, 2016

“If the light is green, you’re burning service units (SUs). If it’s not, you’re not.” – Jeremy Fischer, Jetstream senior technical advisor.

The concept behind the capabilities of new XSEDE resource Jetstream is all about usability, hence, the green light question. In the user interface, when you start a virtual machine (VM) image, a green light comes on. Now, after a few months in early operations mode, Jetstream’s green light is officially on starting in early Fall 2016.

Indiana University and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have announced that Jetstream, the first-ever NSF-supported cloud resource for science and engineering research, will go into full operations as of September 1. Read the full announcement here.

“NSF, the IU Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI), and our many partners are embarking on a journey to operate a system that is both a production cloud and a first of a kind pilot project,” said Craig Stewart, executive director of the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute and Deputy Director of XSEDE Community Infrastructure. “Both design and operations are based on cloud standards, and from the end user’s standpoint this should feel like a production cloud. It’s on all the time, it works all the time. At the same time, this is a first of a kind system for the NSF and thus a pilot project in which we are supporting some very important research while learning a lot about operating a cloud system,” said Stewart.

Jetstream is an open, standards-based cloud platform designed to support science and engineering research, development, and education, while commercial services are typically designed to support businesses and web hosting.

Stewart continued, “What’s special about Jetstream is that it is a managed science cloud – a cloud managed for science. Commercial cloud services are not.”

Jetstream, in that way, is just like any other XSEDE resource: help, in the form of Extended Collaborative Support Services (ECSS), is available, as is Fischer and others across the project. ECSS partners XSEDE users with cyberinfrastructure experts for a period of time ranging from a few months to a year to help researchers fundamentally advance their use of XSEDE resources.

“We want Jetstream to be extremely user friendly, while also allowing flexibility for adapting to what the researcher might want to do,” said Jeremy Fischer, senior technical advisor for the system, which is a distributed science and engineering cloud run by Indiana University, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), University of Arizona, and several funded and collaborating partners. Fischer hosted a tutorial at XSEDE16 in Miami in which he allowed the attendees to register with training accounts in order to see what it’s like running jobs in Jetstream. Stewart presented a paper at XSEDE16 on the system, which won the “Phil Andrews Best Technology Paper” award, titled “Jetstream – Performance, Early Experiences, and Early Results.”

Much of the strength of Jetstream is its “cloudy-ness,” as Fischer puts it.

“Jetstream is not like a typical HPC supercomputer. It’s a cluster providing VMs that allows researchers to interact via a graphical user interface (GUI) via virtual network computing (VNC) and soon any web browser.”

Fischer sees virtual machines as “democratizing” for users. Jetstream has no queues like traditional parallel computing and is intended primarily for interactive use, including the ability to suspend and resume running VMs.

“Traditional HPC resources are hard to learn to use if you are not training in a discipline that traditionally uses such systems,” Fischer says. “People new to advanced computing aren’t used to living on the command line.”

However, because the user is running their own VM, Fischer notes that command line interaction is easily possible.

As of early July 2016, Jetstream had more than 250 users on more than 100 projects, while still officially in “early operations” mode. Users are able to access support to it – even if they missed the tutorial at XSEDE16 – by taking part in online classes through the Cornell Virtual Workshop, or other training, education and outreach means found through the XSEDE portal. More personalized help can come from XSEDE Campus Champions, numbering over 250 across the country; additionally, detailed documentation can be found in User Guides available on the XSEDE website.

“Usability is of the utmost concern with Jetstream,” said Fischer. “We want to enable all users from experts to new researchers to fully grasp Jetstream’s capabilities and further their research.”

Concluded Stewart: “What sets this system apart is its support for the full range of disciplines served by XSEDE, and for small schools—particularly minority-serving institutions—with constrained budgets.”

A Deeper Dive

  • Jetstream offers “self-serve” cloud services, enabling researchers or students to select a pre-existing VM image or to create a new virtual environment for personalized research computing.
  • Provides virtual desktop services to tablet devices, increasing cyberinfrastructure access for users at resource-limited institutions.
  • Authenticates through XSEDE’s partnership with Globus, allowing for a simple mechanism to get into the Jetstream user home page. Once in, the user is in the “Atmosphere” interface, where virtual machines (VMs) can be accessed.
    Enables data transfers via Globus Connect, storage and dissemination via the IUScholarWorks digital repository, and discoverability via a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
  • Hosts persistent Science Gateways.
  • Each physical system has the following specifications: 320 Dell M630 blades with a total of 640 CPUs, 15,360 cores, 258 TFLOPS peak processing capability and 40 TB RAM. Plus, 20 Dell R730 servers for storage nodes, with a total of 40 CPUs, 960 processing cores, 1.2 TB RAM, 16 TB local storage, 960 TB of storage, and peak processing capability of 16.1 TFLOPS.
Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire