Operations & Maintenance for the Endless Frontier

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) has been funded to acquire and deploy a system called Frontera, a powerful new advanced computational instrument for Science and Engineering (S&E) research. The name of the system is inspired by Vannevar Bush's paper "The Endless Frontier", which led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950. Bush argued that science was humanity's last frontier, leading to an endless stream of innovation and discovery that would improve the human condition. Today, computation is one of the most critical tools to advance more deeply into the Endless Frontier. Frontera provides a system of unprecedented scale in the NSF advanced computational portfolio that will yield productive science on day one, while also preparing the community for the shift to even more capable future systems. When deployed, the system will provide more than three times the performance of the current NSF leadership-class computing resource and enable S&E discoveries across a broad range of domains that were not possible otherwise. This project supports the Frontera acquisition plan with the operations and maintenance plan during the production life of the system. The plan for Frontera operations and maintenance is anchored by an experienced team of partners and vendors with a community-leading track record of performance. The project will support the system through a comprehensive project plan, including first-class user support and training, education, outreach, documentation, data management, visualization, analytics-driven application support, and research collaboration. The plan also features a dedicated, broad-based science team, selected to ensure that S&E applications run effectively on a resource of this scale. Frontera will support big science in virtually all S&E disciplines through a dedicated leadership-class computing science team, deep computational science engagements of the Collaborative Support team, and the innovative use of containers. Additionally, the Frontera system will support a broad range of software services, including Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) to support an evolving user base that will make more extensive use of science gateways, automated workflows, and web services. The project will develop new expertise and techniques for leadership-class computing and data-driven applications that benefit future users worldwide through publications, training, and consulting. Furthermore, the Frontera project will serve as a bridge for the S&E community to future systems in 2024 and beyond. The project will leverage the team's unique approach to education, outreach, and training activities to prepare new and current users for leadership-class computing and to encourage, educate, and develop the next generation of computational researchers. The team includes leaders in campus bridging and minority-serving institution (MSI) outreach, and will use data technologies that will increase the number and diversity of people using leadership-class computing for traditional and data-driven applications. 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.