Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF): Enhancing the Capabilities, Scope and Impact of the Extensible Terascale Facility

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Texas is funded by a two-year Cooperative Agreement from the Division of Advanced Computational Infrastructure in the amount of $3,245,266 to integrate the resources available at University of Texas with the Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF). Funding is provided to establish a 10 gigabit/second connection from University of Texas and the Los Angeles Hub of the ETF. As a result of the funding provided through this Terascale Extension Award, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) will contribute significant resources to the ETF user community including: 1) 50% of a major new high-end SUN terascale visualization system that would complement rather than duplicate the visualization system at Argonne National Lab; 2) 50% of a tow high-end computing systems, a 1.2 Teraflop IBM Power 4 system, and a new 5.0 Teraflop Cray-Dell Linux cluster, 3) access to significant storage facilities including 2.8 Petabyte of archival and 50 Terabyte SAN storage; and 4) access to four geosciences data sets that are expected to have a significant impact on research and education in a wide variety of disciplines. The PI's and co PI's involved in this project are deeply immersed in a number of grid architecture and middleware development activities that will also add substantial expertise to the further development of the Extensible Terascale Facility. The University of Texas has strong commitments to issues of broader impact including: 1) TACC is committee to providing leadership in High Performance Computing Across Texas (HiPCAT), an initiative that will bring together six Texas higher education institutions and over 60 minority-serving institution; 2) University of Texas has also actively participated in an international collaboration with Mexico in the area of HPC; 3) access to the geological data across ETF will provide information necessary to respond to emergency and life-threatening situations such as natural disasters and security threats. This data will also contribute broadly to the formulation of public policy on matters such as homeland security, climate change, and water conservation; and 4) TACC is committee to a diversified staffing, educational programs, internships and mentoring and training programs that augment classroom education.