ABSTRACT

Science and engineering rely upon an increasingly complex and integrated ecosystem of advanced computing and data systems, scientific software, and expertise to conduct research that leads to new knowledge and discovery, and improves the Nation's competitiveness and the health and welfare of its citizens. From the building blocks of life on earth to the deepest mysteries of the universe, researchers use this cyberinfrastructure (CI) to carry out computation and analysis at ever larger scales and complexity. Computing without Boundaries: Cyberinfrastructure for the Long Tail of Science is a transformational project from the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, designed to address these challenges. The centerpiece of the project is the acquisition, deployment, and operation of Expanse, a powerful supercomputer that will complement and extend NSF's Innovative High-Performance Computing (HPC) program. Expanse will: 1) increase the capacity and performance for thousands of users of batch-oriented and science gateway computing; and 2) provide new capabilities that will enable research increasingly dependent upon heterogeneous and distributed resources composed into integrated and highly usable CI. Expanse will feature innovations in system software, operations, and support that extend its capabilities far beyond the limits of the physical system. Through its integration with the public cloud and the Open Science Grid, collaboration with the Science Gateway Community Institute, and support for composable systems, Expanse will become part of a more inclusive national CI. The long tail of computing reflects diversity in science, researchers, their institutions, and those who support and operate CI. The project will reach out to underserved and under-resourced communities, through new initiatives like HPC@MSI, which will allocate a portion of Expanse to Minority Serving Institutes via a rapid access allocation to help them quickly use this powerful new resource.

Projected to have a peak speed of 5 Petaflop/s, Expanse will feature next-generation Intel Central Processing Units (CPUs), NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), and a Mellanox InfiniBand network. It will be composed of 13 SDSC Scalable Compute Units (SSCUs), each of which contains 56 CPU nodes and 4 GPU nodes along with over 60 TB of distributed non-volatile memory storage for user scratch. The SSCUs will be integrated with a 12-PB Lustre parallel file system and 7 PB of object storage. SDSC, along with its partners Dell and Aeon Computing, will deploy Expanse in SDSC's energy-efficient data center on the UCSD campus. Expanse will be connected to multiple high-performance research and education networks at 100 Gbps and reach thousands of users who require high performance, but modest-scale resources. Allocation and usage policies will be tailored to achieve fast turnaround and responsiveness. Experts in computational science, data-intensive computing, scientific workflows, and large-scale systems operations will support Expanse at the highest levels of utilization, reliability, and usability. Through integration with national CI, Expanse will enable new models of computing and research that require the full complement of HPC systems and simulation, experimental data analysis, and computational expertise to support and facilitate breakthrough science. Knowledge gained through the project will lead to improvements in algorithms, software, and systems management tools, as well as a better understanding of how integrated CI can be configured to support emerging research.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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