[CAnet - news] Pan-Canadian HPC research network using lightpaths

For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 4 Optical
Internet program web site at http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html
-------------------------------------------


[Some excerpts from original article -- BSA]

http://www.itbusiness.ca/index.asp?theaction=61&sid=59207

SHARCNet and WestGrid use lightpath software to create a link between
scientists across the country. Executives discuss the challenges of managing
data in high-performance computing environments

Network (SHARCNet) on Monday said it had established a dedicated transport
connection running from the University of Guelph in Ontario to the Western
Canada Research Grid's (WestGrid) optical infrastructure in Alberta and
British Columbia. The so-called "lightpath" will run over the CA*Net 4
optical network managed by CANARIE. The Ontario Research and Innovation
Optical Network (ORION), whose engineers completed the installation,
announced the project at its annual Ontario Research and Education Summit in
Toronto.

SHARCNet, a high-performance computing (HPC) resource serving a cluster of
post-secondary schools across southern Ontario, and WestGrid, which commonly
ranks among the biggest supercomputers in Canada, hope the lightpath will be
the beginnings of a pan-Canadian network that will link a handful of other
labs. HPC labs are typically used to perform large, complex mathematical
calculations and simulations in a growing variety of disciplines, including
physics, meterology and life sciences.

HPC labs have started turning to lightpath software as a way of setting up
networks in a condominium fashion, whereby resources are shared and managed
by more than one party. Carleton University, for example, is already using a
CA*net 4 lightpath to bypass Internet bottlenecks for high-speed data
transfer between its Ottawa campus and CERN, the international particle
physics lab in Geneva. WestGrid was also an early adopter of CA*net 4,
connecting $44 million in computing instrumentation.  

Hugh Couchman, SHARCNet's scientific director, said the initial push for a
link with WestGrid came from one of his former post-doctoral students, who
was struggling to send a 5TB simulation from WestGrid to a facility at
Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"Whereas many of the so-called HPC consortia like WestGrid of SHARCNet have
good internal networks, their connection to the outside world is through
some campus infrastructure to the Internet," he said. "It just seems crazy
to have these incredible computational resources sitting on the end of such
a thin pipe."

One of the problems with long-haul networks is large round-trip time and the
effect that has on network performance, said Rob Simmonds, WestGrid's chief
technology officer.

"A lot of people have concentrated on computing resources, but less so on
the data requirements - the data required by large simulation and the data
produced by researchers," he said. "People need to take networking
seriously." 

Couchman said establishing the lightpath connection was "astonishingly
quick," the result of a few week's work following a meeting in mid-May. The
next step will be testing the network and figuring out how to expand it to
other HPC consortia, he said, and then developing a roadmap for upgrades. 

"(Researchers) don't want to invest a lot of time in building the required
infrastructure when they have the idea now," he said. "You really do need to
put some capability on the ground so researchers can see what you can do and
start using it right away."

-------------------------------------
To SUBSCRIBE:
send a blank e-mail message to
[email protected]

To UNSUBSCRIBE:
send a blank email message to
[email protected]
-------------------------------------

These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.


-----------
[email protected]
www.canarie.ca/~bstarn
skype: pocketpro
SkypeIn: +1 614 441-9603


_______________________________________________
news mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.canarie.ca/mailman/listinfo/news