| NSF Org: |
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | May 7, 2019 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 7, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1930003 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Alan Sussman
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | May 1, 2019 |
| End Date: | April 30, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $10,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $10,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1960 KENNY RD COLUMBUS OH US 43210-1016 (614)688-8735 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
OH US 43210-1016 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Modern High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems are rapidly evolving with respect to processor, networking, and I/O technologies. In such a rapidly changing environment, it is critical that next-generation engineers and scientists are exposed to the modern architectural trends of HPC systems and learn how to use the features of these technologies to design HPC software stacks and learn about the process of open-source software developments and its sustainability. The annual MVAPICH User Group (MUG) meeting provides an open forum to exchange information on the design and usage of MVAPICH2 libraries, which are open-source, high-performance and scalable MPI libraries to take advantage of RDMA technology. Travel funding from this project will enable a set of undergraduate and graduate students to attend the MUG meeting. Their participation will help them to enter the next-generation HPC workforce with increased expertise in software design, reuse, and sustainability. The project, thus, serves the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission: to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; or to secure the national defense.
The MVAPICH project focuses on the design of high-performance MPI and PGAS runtimes for HPC systems. Over the years, this project has been able to incorporate new designs to leverage novel multi-/many-core platforms like Intel Xeons, NVIDIA GPGPUs, Open POWER, and ARM architectures, coupled with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) enabled commodity networking technologies like InfiniBand, RoCE, Omni-Path, and iWARP. An annual MVAPICH User Group (MUG) meeting was created six years ago to provide an open forum to exchange information on MVAPICH2 libraries. The funding under this grant aims to achieve increased participation of undergraduate and graduate students working in the HPC area (systems and applications) in the annual MUG event. The requested student travel fund helps attract a set of students from a range of US institutions. Participation in an international event, such as MUG, enables students to obtain global picture of the developments happening in the rapidly evolving HPC domain and open-source software design. The selection committee plans to stress diversity to attract students from minority and under-represented groups.
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.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Modern High-End Computing (HEC) systems allow scientists and engineers to tackle grand challenges in their respective domains and make significant contributions to their fields. Examples of such domains include astrophysics, earthquake analysis, weather prediction, nanoscience modeling, multi-scale and multi-physics modeling, biological computations, computational fluid dynamics, etc. The design and deployment of such HEC systems are fueled by the increasing use of multi-/many-core environments (Intel Xeons, Xeon Phis, NVIDIA GPGPUs and upcoming POWER architectures).
The emergence of Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) enabled high-performance networking technologies like InfiniBand, RDMA over Converged Enhanced Ethernet (RoCE), and Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol (iWARP), are fueling the growth of HEC systems and allowing multi-petascale systems to be designed with commodity cluster configurations at relatively modest costs. As the RDMA networking and I/O technology are steadily gaining importance in designing HPC systems, it is increasingly becoming critical to leverage this technology to design high-performance and scalable software stacks for current and next-generation HPC systems. It is also becoming critical to train students, researchers, and engineers about these technologies so that the next-generation HPC workforce can leverage this technology to the fullest extent.
The PI’s team has been working in this area for the last 20 years (since the inception of InfiniBand technology in 2000). During these years, the MVAPICH project has been able to provide open-source, high-performance and scalable MPI libraries to the HPC community to take advantage of the RDMA technology. As the number of users of the MVAPICH2 libraries has been steadily growing, an annual MVAPICH User Group (MUG) meeting was created four years back to provide an open forum to exchange information on the design and usage of MVAPICH2 libraries. Attendance for this meeting has been steadily rising.
As the HPC field is heading into Exascale era and systems are becoming more complex, it is critical that the next-generation engineers and scientists get exposed to the modern HPC technologies (including RDMA), learn how to use the features of these technologies to design HPC software stacks, learn about the process of open-source software developments and its sustainability.
This student travel grant aimed to achieve the above objectives by encouraging graduate students working in the HPC area (systems and applications) to participate in the annual MUG event. The requested student travel funding was instrumental in attracting seven graduate students from U.S. institutions to participate in the event. MUG '19 event was attended by more than 75 people. Attendees came from 25 organizations spanning seven countries.
The MUG '19 event included a set of tutorials, Keynote Talks, Invited Talks, hands-on sessions, and an open mic session. A special poster session was also organized where the students with travel funding presented their current research results. A presentation was also made by Prof. Alan Sussman, NSF Program Director. The talk focused on opportunities for young researchers.
The presentations from MUG '19 event have been archived under http://mug.mvapich.cse.ohio-state.edu/mug/19/.
The participated students under the travel grant were exposed to the design and development effort of the open-source MVAPICH2 library as well as its impact. The students were also exposed to the cyberinfrastructure learning and workforce development innovations from the talk by Prof. Alan Sussman, NSF Program Director. The students were also able to interact with leading professionals in the field. Overall, the student travel grant helped a set of Ph.D. students to enter the next-generation HPC workforce with a lot of training and practical knowledge on software design, reuse, and sustainability.
Last Modified: 02/27/2020
Modified by: Dhabaleswar K Panda
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