Focused Effort Title: Collaborative Computing Environments (Web Interfaces)

Thematic Area(s): HPC Training and DoD User Productivity,

PI Name: David Bernholdt

PI EMail Address: bernhold@npac.syr.edu

PI Telephone: 315 443 3857           PI Fax: 315 443 1973

Project Description:

Cooperative use of large, complex HPC applications for purposes of
research or education can be quite cumbersome.  Quite often, the only
practical solution is that collaborators must sit down together in the
same room in order to effectively work together with such systems.
However the emergence of flexible electronic collaboration frameworks
offers the potential to remove this bottleneck.  TangoInteractive is
an example of a simple, open collaborative framework with published
APIs and straightfoward protocols which can be used to connect a wide
variety of applications, including HPC applications.  Tango-connected
HPC applications would then become part of the collaborative
environment offered by Tango, which already includes a wealth of
essential tools for basic collaboration and education (including a
shared text editor, shared telnet/terminal emulator, and other
capabilities required for technical collaboration).

In this project, we will develop prototype collaborative research
environments through the integration of HPC applications with the
Tango, combining the efforts of our "Web Interfaces" group with those
of our Collaboration (Tango) group.  Applications will be drawn from
those we have worked with on our "web interfaces" efforts (a Year 3
project which has spawned two Year 4 project proposals, and is related
to the ASC "Gateway" project now getting underway).  This is the most
natural application pool to work with initially, because we are
already familiar with their user interface and operation.  Since every
application presents a unique mix of issues with respect to
"collaboratization", we will choose for our demonstration prototypes
applications which can be treated as fairly general models for certain
aspects of the collaboratization problem -- for example, the sharing
of a Java-based GUI or sharing of a graphical post-processing tool.
The latter is an especially complex problem in general, but building
on NCSA and NPAC experience in shared visualization, we will evaluate
the possibility of including this in our prototype applications.

These models, along with the methodology, as described below, will
serve as a guide to other code developers who wish to incorporate
their HPC applications into collaborative environments.

The project will use existing investment in TANGO Interactive in the
following way:

(a) Existing APIs will be used to bind scientific code "web
    interfaces" to the collaboratory runtime, and the application
    domain-specific "floor control" models will be developed to ensure
    maximal flexibility of the cooperation process
(b) if necessary, additional bindings to the TANGO runtime will be
    developed to support data feeds compatible with TANGO Interactive
    overall architecture
(c) guidelines and interactive training material  will be developed and
    published to explain the process so that in the future scientific
    code developers will be able to "colaboratize" their applications
    easily
(d) The methodology described in (a) to (c) will be packaged and
    seamlessly integrated with the exisiting consulting tools, such as
    shared code editor, shared debugger, and shared telnet access, and
    delivered to CEWES for further distribution.


Benefits:

The ability to share HPC applications for collaborative R&D or
education will enhance both the effectiveness of MSRC users, and of
MSRC/PET staff who work with users of such applications.

Required Resources:

Deliverables:

o Selection of first prototype application (Apr'99)
o "Beta" release of first collaborative HPC application delivered
  for testing and feedback (Oct'99)
o Final version of first collaborative HPC application delivered (Mar'00)
o Selection of second prototype application (Oct'99)
o Release of second collaborative HPC application for testing and
  feedback (Mar'00)
o Module on interfacing HPC applications to Tango to be delivered as
  part of planned Tango Tutorial (C/C Core)
o Technical report (Mar'00)

Expected Customer Commitment/Involvement:
o  Dr. Keith Bedford, OSU, CWO Leader
o  Dr. Richard Weed, CEWES, CSM On-Site Lead
o  Dr. Mary Wheeler, UT Austin, EQM Leader
o  Dr. Niki Deliman, CEWES
o  Dr. Jeff Holland, CEWES