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CI Funding Opportunities and the Shifting Landscape

Barr von OehsenExecutive Director, Cyberinfrastructure Technology Integration

CCIT, Clemson University

NSF CC*IIE Virtual Residency 2015

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CC*NIE, CC*IIE, CC*DNI• The Campus Cyberinfrastructure - Data, Networking, and Innovation (CC*DNI)

program invests in campus-level data and networking infrastructure and integration activities tied to achieving higher levels of performance, reliability and predictability for science applications and distributed research projects. Science-driven requirements are the primary motivation for any proposed activity. CC*DNI awards will be made in seven areas:• Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) - Multi-Campus/Multi-Institution Model

Implementations awards will be supported at up to $5,000,000 total for up to 5 years.

• Data Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher awards will be supported at up to $500,000 total for up to 2 years.

• Network Design and Implementation for Small Institutions awards will be supported at up to $350,000 total for up to 2 years.

• Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards will be supported at up to $1,000,000 total for up to 2 years.

• Campus CI Engineer awards will be made at up to $400,000 total for up to 2 years.• Regional Coordination and Partnership in Advanced Networking awards will be

made at up to $150,000 for up to 2 years.• Instrument Networking awards will be supported at up to $400,000 for up to two

years.

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Major Research Instrumentation (MRI)• The Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) serves to increase access to shared scientific

and engineering instruments for research and research training in our Nation's institutions of higher education, not-for-profit museums, science centers and scientific/engineering research organizations. The program provides organizations with opportunities to acquire major instrumentation that supports the research and research training goals of the organization and that may be used by other researchers regionally or nationally.

• Each MRI proposal may request support for the acquisition (Track 1) or development (Track 2) of a single research instrument for shared inter- and/or intra-organizational use. Development efforts that leverage the strengths of private sector partners to build instrument development capacity at MRI submission-eligible organizations are encouraged.

• The MRI program assists with the acquisition or development of a shared research instrument that is, in general, too costly and/or not appropriate for support through other NSF programs. The program does not fund research projects or provide ongoing support for operating or maintaining facilities or centers.

• Cost-sharing of precisely 30% of the total project cost is required for Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education and for non-degree-granting organizations. Non-Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education are exempt from cost-sharing and cannot include it. National Science Board policy is that voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited.

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CISE Research Infrastructure (CRI)

• The CISE Research Infrastructure (CRI) program drives discovery and learning in the core CISE disciplines of the three participating CISE divisions by supporting the creation and enhancement of world-class research infrastructure that will support focused research agendas in computer and information science and engineering. This infrastructure will enable CISE researchers to advance the frontiers of CISE research. Further, through the CRI program CISE seeks to ensure that individuals from a diverse range of academic institutions, including minority-serving and predominantly undergraduate institutions, have access to such infrastructure. The CRI program supports two classes of awards:

• Institutional Infrastructure (II) awards support the creation of new (II-NEW) CISE research infrastructure or the enhancement (II-EN) of existing CISE research infrastructure to enable world-class CISE research opportunities at the awardee and collaborating institutions.

• Community Infrastructure (CI) awards support the planning (CI-P) for new CISE community research infrastructure, the creation of new (CI-NEW) CISE research infrastructure or the enhancement (CI-EN) of existing CISE infrastructure to enable world-class CISE research opportunities for broad-based communities of CISE researchers that extend well beyond the awardee institutions. Each CI award may support the operation of such infrastructure, ensuring that the awardee institution(s) is (are) well-positioned to provide a high quality of service to CISE community researchers expected to use the infrastructure to realize their research goals.

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Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP)• Program Description

• The Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) supports university research infrastructure essential to high-quality Navy relevant research. The research instrumentation that is necessary to carry out cutting-edge research.

• Research Areas of Interest• Each year that DURIP is in effect, a complete announcement will provide detailed program information, including

the deadline date for submitting proposals. DURIP proposals submitted to ONR should facilitate research in an area of interest to ONR, as described in the Science and Technology section. Potential proposers may contact the appropriate program managers, listed with each area of interest, to explore possible mutual interests before submitting proposals.

• Conditions• DURIP funds will be used for the acquisition of major equipment to augment current or develop new research

capabilities in support of DoD-relevant research. Proposals may request $50,000 to $1,000,000. Proposals for purely instructional equipment are not eligible. General-purpose computing facilities are not appropriate for DURIP funding, but requests for computers for DoD-relevant research programs are appropriate.

• Funds provided under DURIP may not be used for the construction or modification of buildings, building support systems (e.g., heating/ventilation/air conditioning, plumbing and electrical), or fixed equipment (e.g., clean rooms and fume hoods). Proposed budgets can include costs (e.g., machine shop expenses) for constructing, assembling and/or installing equipment, but the budget may not request funding for salaries of faculty, postdoctoral associates or students. Costs for continued operation and maintenance are not eligible for consideration. This competition is open to U.S. institutions of higher education with degree granting programs in science, math or engineering.

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Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program (S10)• Similar to NSF MRI• S10 Biomedical Research Support Shared Instrumentation

Grants• There is no limit on the number of applications an institution

may submit, provided the applications are for different types of equipment

• The Shared Instrument Grant (SIG) program encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instruments or integrated systems that cost at least $50,000. The maximum award is $600,000.

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Important Things to Consider• You have to include science story(ies) • The academic and IT departments need to form

partnerships/collaborations • Intellectual Merit• potential to advance knowledge

• Broader Impacts• potential to benefit society and help achieve specific, desired

societal outcomes• Data management plans• CI Plans

9CAMPUS CI PLANS

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Why a CI Plan?• Proves to NSF (or other funding agencies) that you are serious

about this• Only part of CC*, but will most likely be adopted by others• Shows you have done homework with others on your campus

and at least have talked to community.• Hopefully shows there is a direction your headed that makes

sense for IT/researchers/educators.• CI is not just about networking.

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What is Important?• Shows you have a goal that affects/supports the

research/educational community on your campus.• Can be a way to drive campus funding/ priorities.• Provides proof that what your asking for in proposal is not

tangential or wasted.• Be able to change plan as conditions change.

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Examples of CI Plans

• http://fasterdata.es.net/campusCIplanning/

13SHIFTING LANDSCAPE IN CI FUNDING

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Where did we come from?• NSF HPC evolution• Centers>PACI>TeraGrid>XSEDE>Reports>Reports on Reports

• Campuses growing in parallel• MRIs, CRIs, start-up packages• Condo and co-lo approaches

• Other drivers for campus aggregation….• Security; power and cooling; big data• Above-the-desktop computing needs growing at an

accelerated pace…GIS comes to mind• Training and education gap between resources and

researchers – high barrier to entry without human assistance• …and the barriers become higher as we bring in new

communities

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Reference Point - Scale

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Business growing: some real unusual suspects

Department

• Bioengineering • CCIT HPC • CCIT Software Development • Chemical Engineering • Chemistry • Civil Engineering • Customer Rel & Learning Tech

Cyberinfrastructure Tech Integ • Economics • Elec. & Computer Engr. • Environmental Engr & Earth Sci • Experiential Education • General Engineering • Genetics & Biochemistry • Industrial Engineering • Infrastructure Services & Ops

Department

• International Programs • Law Enforcement & Safety • Management • Mathematical Sciences • Mechanical Engineering • Medicaid IT Services • Network Services & Telecomm • Physics And Astronomy • Public Health Sciences • Research Safety • School of Ag for Env Science • School of Computing • Univ Facilities Support Svcs • VP Finance & Operations 16

Hadoop Training Classes

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How is NSF addressing this?

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• $6.6-million NSF grant (Award #ACI-1445604) and will go into production in January 2016.

• NSF’s first cloud dedicates top support for science and engineering research across all areas of activity supported by the NSF

• Jetstream will be a user-friendly cloud environment designed to give researchers and research students access to interactive computing and data analysis resources “on demand.”

• It will provide a user-selectable library of virtual machines that users can select from to do their research.

• Software creators and researchers will also be able to create their own customized virtual machines -or- their own “private computing system” within Jetstream.

• It will enable countless discoveries across disciplines such as biology, atmospheric science, economics, network science, observational astronomy, and social sciences.

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Jetstream User Community• Biology• Earth Science/Polar Science• Field Station Research• Geographical Information Systems• Network Science• Observational Astronomy• Social Sciences• Jetstream will be particularly focused on researchers working

in the “long tail” of science with born digital data• Enabling analysis of field-collected empirical data on the

impact and effects of global climate change will be one of the specific foci of Jetstream

• Whatever you do

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Jetstream Interface

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Jetstream Design

PI: Dr. Craig Stewart, Indiana University

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• NSF Awards $12 Million to SDSC to Deploy “Comet” Supercomputer• A new petascale supercomputer designed to transform advanced

scientific computing by expanding access and capacity among traditional as well as non-traditional research domains

• Designed to be part of an emerging cyberinfrastructure for what is called the ‘long tail’ of science, which encompasses the idea that a large number of modest-sized computationally based research projects still represents, in aggregate, a tremendous amount of research and scientific impact

• Comet is now in the early operations phase. The machine is open to all XSEDE users with Comet allocations. New users who wish to try Comet can request allocations through normal XSEDE allocation channels. This includes rapid access trial accounts.

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Comet Key Features• Compute Nodes (1944 total)

• Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 2.5 GHz dual socket, 12 cores/socket; 320 GB SSD local scratch memory; 120 GB/s memory bandwidth

• GPU Nodes (36 total)• 2 NVIDIA K-80 GPUs per node; dual socket, 12 cores/socket; 128 GB DDR4 DRAM;

120GB/s memory bandwidth; 320 GB flash memory

• Large-memory Nodes (4 total)• 1.5 TB total memory; 4 sockets, 12 cores/socket; 2.5 GHz

• Interconnect• Hybrid Fat-Tree topology; 56 Gb/s (bidirectional) link bandwidth; 1.03-1.97 µs MPI

latency

• Lustre-based Parallel File System• Access to Data Oasis

• Dedicated gateway/portal hosting nodes and a Virtual Image repositor

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XSEDE Level 2 Resources• LSU SuperMIC• ~$4M funded by the NSF MRI program. • 40% to XSEDE• Both Intel Xeon Phi and NVIDIA Kepler K20X GPUs

• Stanford X-GPU• $3.5M funded by the NSF MRI program• 25% to XSEDE• Available to at least 25 research groups at Stanford and at least 8

collaborators from at least 7 other institutions across the nation• 54 compute nodes using the Cray Hydra technology with FDR

Infiniband. Each node has Intel Haswell 12-cores; 8 NVIDIA Kepler cards; 128 GB of DDR4 memory; a 120 GB SSD and two 1 TB hard drives

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• One of two $10M NSF awards for research in cloud computing• CloudLab provides a “meta-cloud” for building clouds• Build your own cloud on our hardware resources• Agnostic to specific cloud software…• Run existing cloud software stacks (like OpenStack, Hadoop, etc.)• … or new ones built from the ground up

• Control and visibility all the way to the bare metal• “Sliceable” for multiple, isolated experiments at once

With CloudLab, it will be as easy to get a cloud tomorrow as it is to get a VM today.

www.CloudLab.us

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CloudLab’s Hardware

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One facility, one account, three locations

Wisconsin Clemson Utah

• About 5,000 cores each (15,000 total)• 8-16 cores per node• Baseline: 4GB RAM / core• Latest virtualization hardware

• TOR / Core switching design

• 10 Gb to nodes, SDN• 100 Gb to Internet2 AL2S• Partnerships with multiple vendors

• Storage and net.• Per node:

• 128 GB RAM• 2x1TB Disk• 400 GB SSD

• Clos topology• Cisco

• High-memory • 16 GB RAM / core• 16 cores / node• Bulk block store• Net. up to 40Gb• High capacity• Dell

• Power-efficient• ARM64 / x86• Power monitors• Flash on ARMs• Disk on x86• Very dense• HP

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Community Outreach27

• Applications in areas of national priority• Medicine, emergency response, smart grids, etc.• Through

• “Opt in” to compute jobs from domain scientists

• Summer camps• Through Clemson data-intensive computing program

• Under-represented groups

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ACI-REF: A Novel Approach• Research & Education “Facilitators” (REFs)• Domain-area experts with knowledge of ACI resources and

capabilities• Substantial outreach activities by REFs – to all disciplines and

departments on campus• One-on-one problem solving and interaction• Focus on people – not technology• Community based

ACI Resources Researchers

ACI-REF ProjectFacilitators

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A Model – Campus LevelClemson• May 2010 – first Clemson “facilitator” funded• 2008: 19/52 Departments Trained on HPC• 2014: 46/52 Departments Trained on HPC

May 2010: NSF Outreach &Infrastructure ImprovementGrant Funded

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Formation• NSF-sponsored workshops held in 2012 helped define the needs of

the broader community• Goals: • Advance our nation's research & scholarly achievements through the

transformation of campus computational capabilities and enhanced coupling to the national infrastructure.

• Create new career path

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Award

$5.3M Award supports:• 2 ACI-REFs at each campus

• Strategic Direction - Jim Bottum• Steering Committee: John Towns, XSEDE; Greg Monaco,

GPN; Glenn Ricart, US Ignite• Chief Scientist - Miron Livny• ACI-REF PI Committee Chair – James Cuff• Science Outreach and facilitator lead - Barr von Oehsen

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Questions?