NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory to present applied research at SC05
CISL R&D activities are creating new high-performance computational capabilities for the geosciences
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| Dr. Henry Tufo, head of the Computer Science Group of NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) and Dr. Richard Loft, deputy director of CISL, stand next to BlueGene/L, NCAR's experimental supercomputer. Tufo and Loft will offer presentations on emerging computational technologies at SC|05, being held in Seattle Nov. 12–18, 2005. | |
Top scientists, mathematicians, and software engineers from the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will offer a series of presentations at SC05 to show how CISL research activities are creating new high-performance computational capabilities for the geosciences.
“CISL utilizes proven technologies to support high-end computing, data analysis, and data archival for the atmospheric and related sciences,” says Tom Bettge, deputy director of CISL Services and Operations. “But we also pursue new technologies to help scientists address grand challenge problems. At SC05, we’ll talk about how the services and products emerging from our applied research will advance Earth systems science."
“In the past, the NCAR exhibit focused mainly on supercomputing operations,” says Dr. Richard Loft, deputy director of CISL Research and Development. “This year we’re taking a different approach, highlighting CISL’s R&D activities and the interdisciplinary nature of computational science in the 21st century.”
Bettge will give an overview of CISL, talking about plans to maintain and augment NCAR computing and data management facilities. Loft will discuss the challenges of creating a petascale supercomputing system for the geosciences, detailing computational requirements for climate modeling, numerical weather prediction, geophysics, seismology, and space physics.
Other presentations will focus on mathematical tools for Earth systems science, Grid-based computing for biogeochemical applications, parallel model development, emerging technologies in terascale visualization, Python frameworks for geoscientific analysis, and a “virtual tour” of the NCAR computing facility from 1963 to 2005.
SC, the premiere international conference on high-performance computing, networking, and storage, convenes this year in Seattle, Nov. 12–18.
CISL presentations will be given every hour on the hour on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at the NCAR research exhibit, space #322, located on the lower exhibit level of the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.
CISL SC05 presentations at a glance
 Doug Nychka |
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 Amik St. Cyr |
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 John Clyne |
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 Mary Haley |
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 Marc Genty |
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 Tom Bettge |
Mathematical tools for the geosciences: Dr. Doug Nychka, director of CISL’s Institute for Mathematics Applied to the Geosciences (IMAGe), will talk about the institute's interdisciplinary activities, which range from the study of turbulent flows to data assimilation and statistical climate analysis. IMAGe, formed a year ago to enable the application and development of new mathematical tools and models for geophysical problems, is disseminating its research results in the form of software packages and environments to a wide community of scientists.
Biogeochemical Grid computing: Dr. Henry Tufo, head of CISL’s Computational Science Group, will describe the service-oriented architecture of a Grid computing facility for biogeochemical applications being developed by CISL and the University of Colorado. CISL and CU researchers are building an end-to-end system that harnesses distributed resources across organizational boundaries, offering a cost-effective solution to compute-intensive problems. The software framework is extensible and can be readily applied to other climate-simulation problems with similar workflows.
Modeling with HOMME on BlueGene/L: CISL computational scientist Dr. Amik St. Cyr will review experiments running the High-Order Multiscale Modeling Environment (HOMME) on IBM’s BlueGene/L system. HOMME is a dynamical core that uses spectral-element methods for climate modeling. It employs advanced algorithms and computing techniques that will allow it to use tens of thousands of processors effectively, and is now being coupled to complex physics processes. St. Cyr will describe the results of incorporating Aqua Planet (a climate-model test that simulates an idealized “water world”) into HOMME and running the simulation on BlueGene/L.
Visualizing terascale data sets: CISL senior software engineer John Clyne will talk about new techniques for exploring terascale-sized data sets in turbulence research. “Computational data sets are getting too big to analyze using traditional methods," Clyne says. “For many numerical modelers, the greatest challenge begins once their simulation is complete and they’re ready to start analyzing their data.” Clyne will describe the Visualization and Analysis Platform for Ocean, Atmosphere, and Solar Researchers (VAPoR), a new software package CISL has developed in collaboration with U.C. Davis and Ohio State University. VAPoR combines scientific visualization tools with traditional software for statistical data analysis.
Python interfaces to visualization software: CISL senior software engineer Mary Haley will demonstrate new features in PyNGL and PyNIO, Python interfaces to the NCAR Command Language (NCL). NCL is a popular visualization and data-analysis software package for the geosciences. The new interfaces will allow a wider user community to access the high-quality graphics library and file input/output capabilities of NCL. ”By creating these interfaces,” says Haley, “we're opening NCAR to a whole new range of opportunities for collaboration with universities and other research centers.”
NCAR supercomputing, 1963–2005: CISL senior software engineer Marc Genty will present a historical tour of NCAR supercomputers from 1963, when NCAR’s state-of-the-art system had a memory size of 32 K, to the present. Genty will detail the current suite of NCAR supercomputers, showing how they are configured, managed, and used in the rapidly changing arena of atmospheric and geoscience research.
The NCAR cyberinfrastructure: CISL deputy director Tom Bettge will give an overview of CISL, showing how it fulfills its mission of serving the computational, data management, and research needs of the geosciences community. Bettge will describe NCAR’s cyberinfrastructure environment, outline the challenges in maintaining and enhancing this environment, and outline future options for augmenting the data center.
Petascale supercomputing: CISL deputy director Rich Loft will discuss the scientific and technical challenges of creating a petascale supercomputing system for the Earth system sciences. He will give a sense of the enormity of the task, talk about the applications that could make use of such a system, and review competing efforts around the world.
About CISL
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CISL is a world leader in supercomputing and cyberinfrastructure, providing services to more than 60 member universities of the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), as well as to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the larger Earth systems community. CISL performs basic and applied research in information technology, computational science, and mathematics.
NCAR was formed in 1960 and has a broad interdisciplinary research program involving more than 1,000 employees, of which several hundred hold advanced scientific or engineering degrees. The NCAR scientific program includes nearly all aspects of the atmosphere, including climate and weather, atmospheric chemistry, ecology, instrumentation, scientific computing, and economic and societal impacts of atmospheric processes.
NCAR is operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research under the primary sponsorship of the National Science Foundation.—Lynda Lester
