Florida Advanced Computing Consortium A vision and a plan for research computing in Florida

Goals Support research computing Leverage expertise Maximize external funding Increase efficiency

Research Computing Understood in the broadest sense o large data sets o high throughput  cloud computing, virtual machines/clusters/networks o heterogeneous parallelism  MPI, OpenMP, CUDA, OpenCL, FPGA

People over hardware Expertise trumps hardware o need talented people o advanced education o constant training Radical collaboration o workshops o teleconferences

New algorithms New problems o increasing complexity o large data sets Need new approaches o new algorithms o new implementations  new code: professional grade  not graduate student quality

Statewide effort Starting with the Sunshine Grid Build a statewide infrastructure o Bigger universities start o All universities, faculty and their students benefit Florida Advanced Computing Consortium

FACC Create a formal organization o Do not duplicate on-campus activities o Provide coordination o fundamentally a distributed organization Type I Center? o under the Board of Governors

FACC is distributed Does not own assets o All assets are owned by member universities Does not have employees o All work is done by employees of members Member universities must commit to support FACC

Business model core Copy from other institutions Provide a core set of assets o people, storage, clusters, networks o needed for stability o funded by the 5 major players:  FSU, UCF, UF, UM, USF Provide local staff

Business model build-out Build on that with extra funds o faculty at the 5 major players o provosts, deans and faculty at the smaller institutions o use startup and grant funds o buy hardware and expert-FTE All member institutions must provide some local support staff

Added below by Jim

Who is Served by FACC? Public and Private Universities Medical institutions throughout the state State Government organizations Industry

Other State-wide Efforts Indiana University’s supercomputer bolsters state economy* o A project conducted by medical information aggregator PearlDiver Technologies, Inc., and Indiana University is anticipated to boost the state’s economy. * Healthcare IT News

Other State-wide Efforts LONI (Louisiana Optical Network Initiative) installed six clusters at the six LONI member campuses o LSU o University of Louisiana Lafayette o University of New Orleans o Southern University, Louisiana Tech o Tulane "These enhancements to LONI's computing power will make the network particularly attractive to the kinds of companies we need here to energize our state's high-tech economy.” “That's why we're leveraging the state's investment in LONI by reserving 10 percent of the grid's computational power for the creation and retention of hightech jobs.” o Governor Kathleen Blanco

Think Outside the Box Run Florida’s Sunshine Grid on the Sun or other renewable energy o Use clean energy to host data centers o Solar Air Conditioning o Solar Power o Wind or ocean currents Increased efficiencies of compute and data storage through partnerships with industry and academia

Seem Far Fetch? Solar-Powered Datacenter Launches in Green Internet Network, June 29, 2010 Massachusetts Green High Performance Compute Center, will be run mostly on Hydro and Wind generate power o Joint effort BU, Harvard, MIT, MASSU, NE Syracuse University, Green Data Center receives honorable mention in international competition

What’s the Future of Research Computing Anyone’s Guess o All in the “Cloud”? o Will it be GPUs or CPUs? Sure bets o Agile to accommodate different hardware o Staffed to support leading edge apps o Equipped to support data deluge

What you can do to help Provide strong support for another New Florida Submission o This time the focus would be on acquiring hardware assets Provide some form of matching to demonstrate to BOG Univ Commitments o staffing o funds for support What other things could your University bring? o Shared Instruments o High profile projects o Outreach FACC is a container for things like the Sunshine Grid o Other FACC possible “products”?