JISC NTI Review
December 13, 1996
Geoffrey Fox
Syracuse University
Recommendations
•	Cluster software evaluation projects did good work but dissemination and continuing evaluation not part of NTI. This means that even as clusters get more attractive, there is no natural way for potential purchasers to tap into results
–	Most cluster evaluation projects terminated 1-2 years ago while the JISC funded general and very complete review by Mark Baker could be sharpened up for the operational task of aiding an organizational that wants to buy cluster management software today!
•	Need to include ongoing evaluation of Windows NT and Linux PC clusters into cluster evaluation program.These are likely to be clustering solution with the broadest appeal.
–	This seems an urgent need as many organizations face need to replace aging equipment while new institutions in HPC field are most likely to use the PC solution as it offers best cost performance ratio.
–	This should include cluster management software (public domain and commercial) as well as PVM MPI and HPF.
•	The NTI Cluster and HPC training and education work would have been improved in some cases with greater involvement of individuals active in research arena. HPCC is emerging technology which needs leading edge research expertise in projects involving it.
–	Short term non academic appointments are not effective if one wishes to put together teams of individuals at the leading edge.
–	This recommendation would tend to change balance of some teams towards academic and away from some computer service organizations. However the two most succesful projects (Manchester and Edinburgh HPCTE) were led by computer services and so this remark should be interpreted carefully. In general one should carefully examine credentials of bidding teams!
•	Part of HPCTE should be focussed on integration of advanced computation into groups, organizations and disciplines which are not using it now. This is likely to be more attractive than particular courses on PVM, HPF etc.
–	Alternatively view as promotion of academic discipline of computional science rather than narrower goal of using HPC in research  i.e. grow the use of computation as a respected academic methodology to complement thory and experiment
–	This generalized goal will be particularly helpful in enhancing outreach to institutions and disciplines which have not traditionally used HPC and/or are not so actve in research.
•	Succesful HPCTE centres were “creative” (broad) in their interpretation of HPC as “advanced computation”. This should be encouraged
–	Examples are:
–	Manchester: Visualization, Java, VRML
–	Belfast: Datamining
–	Edinburgh: Business, Computational Science
•	The HPCTE teams typically documented well the outreach effort in terms of courses taught and similar activities but there was little documentation of impact which could be measured in terms of:
–	Research Projects initiated
–	Academic courses (modules) and programs (such as Computational Engineering and Design Centre at Southampton) established and/or enhanced (my preferred impact area)
–	Belfast did assess their project well
•	We recommend an effort to assess more precisely JISC HPCTE impact as this assesment could indicate those approaches which were most effective
–	Our predjudice is that courses in technologies such as MPI and HPF are appropriate to enhance leading research but that broader outreach material (computational science) would be more effective in integrating computation into academic programs. The latter is our suggestion for most promising focus of JISC funding.
•	Establishment of “Centers” focussed on computation are a good indication of the integration of computation into HE institutions.
–	Need to make JISC work live on in terms of activities that are naturally funded by the HE institutions -- teaching of computationally augmented courses is one of best survivable mechanisms
•	Some of the projects seemed to have had disappointing institutional commitment to follow up and continue efforts “jump-started” by JISC. This follow-up commitment should be part of evaluation of new bids.
•	A focussed effort to collect and catalog material produced by JISC NTI on a single Web resource would be vey valuable
–	The software component should be coordinated with the US “National High Performance Software Exchange”.
–	Educational material should be commented as to type and level of material and course material from different sources on the same general area should be contrasted.
–	Integrate the two SEL-HPC Web catalogs into this new Web resource.
–	Incude both HPCTE and other NTI sources of educational material.
•	Some of the US activities (e.g. the Virtual Workshop at Cornell) have been more aggressive than UK in using advanced Web technology (e.g. Java applets) as a teaching tool.
–	More generally identify and use international “Best of Practice” in rapidly improving Web disemination echnology
•	In NTI projects developing software , need a plan for supporting it after projects end
•	There are non trivial IPR issues in making material available on the Web but probably as field changes so rapidly, there is more to be lost than gained by “protecting” training material either with passwords or by using an inconvenient (postscript) dissemination method.
A)7 Training and Education Projects
3HPCTE: HPC Training and Education Center University of Edinburgh
5HPCTE: HPC Training and Education Center University of Manchester
6HPTCE: HPC Training and Education Center University of Southampton
2HPTCE: Training and Education Center University of Wales College of Cardiff
HPC Training and Education Center SEL(London)-HPC Consortium
•	You were a success but didn’t realise it!
HPC Training and Education Center Queen’s University Belfast (DENI funded)
 11: Use of Fortran90 and HPF University of Liverpool
•	Dr. Steve Morgan, Computing Services (substantial F90 X3J3 experience)
•	Quite expensive as undertermined amount of ‘far’ project money also used
–	Have no cost extension to October 97
•	Did not have pro-active outreach as one of its deliverables (as did HPCTE’s) even though passive placement on Web has been very succesful.
•	Note MANTEC course being used in local universities (as MANTEC had outreach in mandate) whereas not clear that Liverpool course was used even at Liverpool as computational science activities (IASC) closed
–	Mechanical Engineering does teach F90 in one of their courses
•	Delves head of math and computing and IASC (Institute for advanced Scientific Computing) was HPF expert but left to set up company NA software
•	Chuck Koelbel may use F90 notes in DoD modernization lectures
•	The HPCTE (SEL, Belfast, Cardiff) Fortran 90 basic course inferior as developers did not have experience of Liverpool team. The MANTEC conversion course is high quality
•	Note that EPC (Edinburgh Portable compiler) F90 compiler for SGI is much better than one SGI provides
B)One (Simple) HPF Compiler
High Performance Fortran Translation - University of Southampton
C)7 Projects in Research and Development of Nifty Distributed and Clustered Computing Technology
20: Project AUTALS(Amoeba/UNIX Teaching and Learning System)	Southampton Institute of Higher Education
•	NOT reviewed
10: Network of Workstations - ‘far’ utilities -- University of Liverpool
•	Dr. Steve Morgan, Computing services
•	Very modest effort as some (undetermined) amount of already small effort actually spent on HPF/F90 education activity!
•	far was  very simple lightweight system which was designed for reserving block of Sun workstations for a parallel run.
•	far did not support migration or checkpointing (not so important in Imperial Codine evaluation) or batch queues (critical in most cases)
•	far depends on NFS and automount on Sun
•	far is easier to set up than Codine
•	However not clear if evaluation of pluses and minuses of far versus NQS/Codine etc. was produced
•	far Installed at Durham but essentially no longer used as Liverpool switched to an SGI 14 processor R10000 solution.
•	Liverpool based (NA Software) HPF compiler installed as part of this project. Delves set this company up.
•	Probably should not have been funded!
1: A Dynamic Self-Configuring Distributed Computing Facility	University of Durham
•	NOT reviewed
•	Used Condor but found that not robust enough
24: Distributed Supercomputing Scalable High Speed Networking University of St. Andrews
15: Parallel Computing in Higher Education University of Oxford
•	NOT reviewed
16: A Parallel System that Exploits the Spare Capacity of open Networked workstations University of Reading
12:High Performance Computing using Spare Capacity on a Network of Workstations University of Manchester
•	Presented by W. T. Hewitt (head of Computer Graphics Unit at Manchester)
•	Claimed to develop a thread based distributed virtual shared memory but essentially delivered nothing relevant
–	did not finish the two exemplar applications that were promised after Hey review
–	Matrix algorithm run on prototype had terrible performance with massive slowdown
•	A project that should never have been funded. the PI (Kelly) was clearly unqualified for job as hadn’t done research for 10 years and unaware of research in area.
•	Kelly also has reputation for not delivering and did not work with one researcher (McLean) on project. Hewitt put in charge half way through
•	A braver JISC would have terminated project earlier but major error was in initial evaluation
•	Note Sumner (at time on JISC committee) “promised” to oversee but not PI
–	Sumner removed for other reasons as head of department
•	Manchester has learnt some if not all lessons
D) 3 Projects in Deployment of Clustered Computing Systems (Hardware/Software) and Proactive Support/Development of Parallel Applications
4: HPC-Alpha Workstation Farm - University of East Anglia
6: HPC using Spare Capacity on a Network of Workstations - University of Glasgow
Missing: Development of Parallel Finite Difference Time Domain Application - Brunel University
•	NOT reviewed
E)2 Projects in Evaluation and perhaps Deployment of Existing Clustered Computing Solutions
18: Support of Distributed Batch Systems for UNIX - University of Sheffield Batch 
•	Presented by ? of Compute Services but young programmer Stuart Herbert did all the work -- he was a great hacker!
–	Herbert now works for a local company and is also a LINUX expert and doing the multiprocessor support for it.
•	Sheffield had no interest in parallel computing but lots of users
•	NQS was originally 300,000 lines of C code -- GNQS as cleaned up by Sheffield only has 150,000 lines.
•	Will ask Herbert about a possible NT version of  GNQS
•	Note easy to put GNQS on a LINUX PC cluster
•	Note that as GNQS Publc Domain, it attracts modules from people around the world! (as in WWW free software)
•	NQS stores information in POSIX nodes (in disk filesystems) and perhaps is sensitive to unsaid asumptions that information preserved.
•	Note Digital has better mission critical NT servers than Compaq!
•	Sheffield now supports GNQS and it is used by 35 UK HEI’s including Exeter and Bristol
•	Imperial College has harder job than Sheffield as strong departments make Imperial job’s harder. Sheffield can control them more easily! So not suprising that Imperial needed Codine robustness.
8: Serial Work and Parallel Computing Techniques in a Workstation Cluster Environment - Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
•	R.J.Hynds and P.Belli
•	ICSTM has a lot of Workstations supporting very large funded activity
•	Looked at NQS Condor -- rejected as not robust enough for production environment and hard to keep up to date with numerous O/S changes
•	Codine and LoadLeveller are commercial versions of Condor (which itself built on NQS) with comparable capabilities
•	Codine has nice graphical user interface but in fact not used by users
•	Initial tests shoed Codine effective as reduced paging on heavily loaded machines
•	LoadLeveller looked at on 2 IBM machines but not continued as price prohibitive
•	Codine failed to negotiate CHEST (UK wide University bulk rate) pricing
•	Codine cost about $6000 year at ICSTM for unlimited number of machines of all types. They have now doubled price
•	Head of Computer Services R.J. Hynds was a Space Physicist
•	Codine even better choice if parallel computing needed
•	This was 9 month project in 94-95 and after initial Southampton conference had no contact with National scene. Note JISC NTI did not have dissemination as part of project
•	They believe conclusions on comparison of systems are still valid.