CC* Compute: Integrating Georgia Tech into the Open Science Grid for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Studying the Universe with all possible sources of information is the objective of multi-messenger astrophysics. Groundbreaking gravitational wave observations with LIGO, high-energy neutrino observations with IceCube, and very high-energy gamma-ray observations with VERITAS enable multi-messenger astrophysics. These and future instruments like CTA enable a complete view of the most violent and energetic phenomena in the Universe, such as the merger of black holes and neutron stars or the processes near the supermassive black holes at the center of large galaxies. All these efforts are computationally intensive, both in data analysis and in simulations. The Open Science Grid (OSG) infrastructure and services are an ideal platform to meet the computational requirements of Multi-messenger Astrophysics. This project acquires cyber infrastructure resources to connect Georgia Tech to the OSG and integrate these resources into computational efforts of the previously-mentioned NSF funded facilities. The High Throughput Computing Cluster acquired under this award includes 12 compute nodes with 40-core Intel Skylakes with 192 GB memory to support LIGO project requirements and others. IceCube and LIGO are supported with 4 GPU nodes, each equipped with 16-core Intel Skylakes and 4 NVIDIA TeslaV100 GPUs with 96GB memory. A special OSG StashCache has 432TB of storage in direct support of projects such as CTA. The system is 10Gbps connected in the Georgia Tech data center which in turn has 100Gbps+ to Southern Crossroads R&E exchange point. This project's resources serve as a catalyst for Georgia Tech's long-term integration into the OSG, as a standard service offered to all researchers on campus. An important component of this proposal is a significant number of Graphical Processing Units, used to accelerate simulations. This project makes Atlanta the first StashCache provider in the Southeast, as a service that enables fast access to distributed OSG datasets by regional institutions that participate in this national grid. 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.