Final Report of the Faculty Ad Hoc Committee of the
Research Computing Task Force
on an Advanced Computational Support Center.

 

The recent Virginia2020, UCIT and Research Computing Task Force (RCTF) Reports all stipulate the need for an advanced computing support center to serve University researchers.  The following outlines a plan for a Center to provide this support.  While this Center is a University initiative, it should grow, in part, out of the existing ITC Research Computing Support Center, with additional funding and staffing from elsewhere.  Its implementation plan borrows heavily from that of the highly successful ITC-Academic Computing Health Sciences center; by considering some of the lessons learned at ACHS (see below), the proposed Advanced Computational Support Center (ACSC) should meet its goals more quickly and effectively.

 

The target audience for support from the ACSC would be the faculty and graduate student researchers and scholars at the University, .  This target audience is the same group currently served by ITC’s Research Computing Support group, which is unable to meet all the demand for services and provide the levels of support requested in the Virginia2020, UCIT, and RCTF reports.  ITC’s Research Computing Support Center/Group is also limited by the absence of many of the guidelines and features of the ITC-ACHS that are outlined below.

 

The goals for the ACSC are:

·        To spearhead the deployment of the resources recommended by other Research Computing Task Force ad hoc groups (High Performance Computing and Mass Storage)

·        To provide the supporting and collaborative computational expertise necessary to accelerate faculty research;

·        To promote wider collaborations among researchers;

·        To mentor graduate students and departmental local support partners in computational science in general and Center resources in particular;

·        To license, administer, install, and support research software applications

·        To manage the University high-performance computing platforms;

·        To act as liaisons to national supercomputing centers and metacenters; and

·        To facilitate cost-sharing arrangements on grant applications, thereby increasing extramural funding.

·        To allocate dedicated staff time and high performance computing resources to specific projects in accordance with recommendations of an advisory panel.

 

Similar services are specifically targeted to biomedical researchers by ITC-ACHS.  ITC-ACHS has required sustained and substantial staffing, space and funding from ITC and the Medical School.  It has long been considered a “success story” in providing support that was lacking.  The ITC-ACHS is used as a recruiting tool for new faculty and students to demonstrate a serious commitment to supporting biomedical researchers.  The proposed ACSC would similarly highlight the University’s commitment to being a nationally prominent research institution.

 

The salient features of ITC-ACHS which are important guidelines for the successful creation and operation of an ACSC are:

·        It receives joint funding from ITC and the Medical School  Both parties provided start-up funding and continue to provide ongoing funding and FTEs.  The partnership arrangement keeps all parties vested.

·        It combines computing support from ITC with specialized, discipline specific expertise provided from the Medical School  (The latter includes a number of faculty positions, which are more attractive than staff positions to some candidates.) 

·        It is centrally located and all staff have office space in the facility.  There is public lab space and space for those servers which cannot be administered remotely.  Space for meetings and presentations is available.

·        Periodic oversight by a committee of the vested parties: Center staff, ITC management and faculty users meet regularly to provide oversight as researchers needs evolve.

·        Support for individual desktop machines, general software, and basic server administration are avoided.  Such support has been a costly distraction of staff from core application support. Training and mentoring of graduate students and LSPs to provide this support is a better use of resources.

 

ITC-ACHS serves as a “proof of concept” demonstrating a successful model for delivering high-end computing support; it can be readily adapted to other areas.  The research community outside the biomedical community is larger, and with a different (and wider) array of applications will beneeding supported.  The specific areas of expertise (and minimum recommended staffing levels) for the ACSCCenter are:

1.      Advanced Application Specialists (4 FTEs)

a.      Mathematical Packages,  Scientific Libraries,  Statistical packages,  Database software, and Data Acquisition/Analysis (e.g., LabView).

b.      Discipline specific packages (e.g., abaqus, gaussian98)

2.      Parallel computing/high performance specialists (3 FTEs)

a.      Optimization and parallelization of compiled language code

b.      Batch queue configuration for high performance clusters

c.      Liaisons to national high performance computing centers

3.      Scientific visualization/graphics specialists (2 FTEs)

a.      Scientific visualization/graphic software (e.g. IRIS Explorer and IDL)

b.      Scientific word processing (e.g., laTex, IBM techexplorer, Scientific Word)

4.      Research System Administrators Management (2 FTEs)

a.      System Software/System administrators for research computing platforms, including the computing platforms the RCTF-High Performance Computing ad hoc committee recommends acquiring.

b.      Research software installations

c.      Control allocation and use of the high performance computing platforms to direct users to most appropriate systems, and ensure optimal throughput

5.      Center Support Staff (Secretarial, Administrative) (1 FTE)

6.      Center Director (1 FTE)

7.      Student Consultant(s) (wage position)

Based on the successful ITC-ACHS model, Aa centrally located facility with all support staff co-located will is needed to promote active community participation.  Specific space requirements are for:

1.      Lab Area: A large Llab area with a mix of computing platforms where staff can work interactively with users at a workstation consoles, or where a user can triesy out various software (both licensed and trial versions). Similar to what the RCSC is now.

2.      Reading Area: This lab should be large enough to have reading area set aside with comfortable chairs, and shelves for periodicals, books, and technical manuals. This would provide a place for users to study documentation before sitting down at a workstations as well as a central location for the Center documentation.

3.      Conference/Meeting Area: A room that can be used for meetings as well presentations, e.g. the RCSC “Brownbags”.

4.      Staff Offices

The Advanced Computing Support Center specifically addresses the needs identified in the Research Computing Task Force report (www.itc.virginia.edu/rctf/finalreport.html) as follows:

·        Specifically called for by recommendation 5.1

·        Addresses need for administration expertise in advanced research systems identified in recommendation 5.5

·        Identifies the entity responsible for software and site licenses called for by recommendation 5.6

·        Provides a mechanism to improve and foster communication and collaboration as identified by recommendation 5.8

·        This is the responsible entity for high performance computing as outlined in recommendation 5.10

The Advanced Computing Support Center is a coherent realization of the broad principles articulated in the March 2001 Research Computing Task Force Report.  It will enable faculty and students to pursue scholarship and research funding in the coming years.  It will provide a focal point and venue which facilitates faculty and graduate student scholarship, research, and research funding for years to come by enabling them to enhance their expertise and competitiveness in their fields.