Agenda for the ITC-Research Computing Management Meeting
March 26, 2007 at 10:30AM
2015 Ivy Road, 2nd Floor Conference Room

 

Members: Alice, Hamp, Jim, Joe S., Mark, Mike, Robin, Terry, Tim S., Tom, Tim T.
Chair: Tim T.
Recorder: Alice Howard

I. Connection Question: What about research computing do you find compelling and why? (or not)

II. Corrections to minutes from last meeting on February 26, 2007?

III. Old Business:

• Proposed research computing hardware expenditures. Decided at February meeting:
  • Buy large memory nodes (~8 nodes of ~16GB) for new cluster to replace Athena. Have operational in mid-summer.
  • Use any remaining funds to buy additional nodes for dogwood
  • Hamp will send out cost estimates of adding infiniband to some nodes of dogwood.
  • Retire birch, not buy new nodes to make "new birch" cluster. Likely not offer infiniband (or other high speed interconnect) replacement.
  • Researchers can buy-in to cluster in multiples of 5 nodes and get dedicated access to 80% of purchase (e.g, if buy 5, dedicated access to 4).
  • Review and modify queuing policies that discourage rapid turnaround over long running jobs - have future public forum on queuing policies. Increase awareness on existing test queues of clusters.
• (from prior meetings: (Tom) Genomics might want to buy in to cluster – but infiniband type cluster not appropriate for them. They need large memory computers.
  
• Jim & Hamp will come up with rate for buying "priority" time on dogwood cluster.


• Linux Clusters: Birch, Cedar, Dogwood - any issues, concerns or upcoming updates/changes?
• Any update on conversion to authenticate to Eservices via Kerberos for Unix logins/connections for Blue.unix? (AKA Phase 2 of Netbadge CDP and "unified password" web site).
• Infrastructure Supporting Research Task Force (https://www1.seas.virginia.edu/itrtf/). (Maillist is itrtf@virginia.edu)
  • UVa's participation in ORNL's response to NSF RFP for next generation/iteration of Supercomputing Center . The full proposal was due on 2/2/07 - Mike to check with Mitch on status/update?

IV. New Business:

• Project Implicit, PI: Brian Nosek, Psychology Department. Project description at: NIH-IPP.researchplan.B-Nosek.pdf
  • Looking for kind and amount of assistance from ITC (mostly) for project. Project web site is at Harvard. Uses Oracle back-end. Gets tens of thousands of hits, especially when featured on TV. Have Java programmers who would welcome consultations on how to make code more efficient and robust. Would be interested in moving infrastructure (Oracle DB and cluster) here. Web site is http://implicit.harvard.edu
  • Carla Lee, Andrew Sallans (from Brown SEL) and Tim Tolson met with Brian and two students on the project last week to get some background on the project and their needs. Brief summary of this meeting
    
• In light of our familiarity with collaborative model of communities, consider for next meeting, re-examining our purpose, our membership and our constiuency.
  • what are we about/doing?
  • who are we as group?
  • Do we have the right group of folks?
  • Are we organized/operating effectively/efficently?
• Any other Items?

V. Adjourn by 12:00 and next meeting

• Next Scheduled Meeting of ITC ResComp Standing Committee: Monday, April 29th, 10:30 AM in ITC-2015 Ivy Road, Room #102 (First Floor Conference Room)!
  
  Please send suggestions, additions, corrections to: Tim Tolson or Alice Howard
  

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