Planning Our Cyberinfrastructure Future
Slide Presentation:
Good morning, I'm delighted to be here with you today to
share with you our future plans for cyberinfrastructure. This community,
NPACI and the Alliance, of many disciplines working together with users
to create cyberinfrastructure is absolutely essential. I'm here to assure
you that as we move forward, we will do everything possible to maintain
and build your community.
But before I begin, I'd like to recognize the breadth and depth of the
outstanding contributions made to science by my highly-respected colleague,
and your fearless leader, Fran Berman. Because of these contributions,
Fran was recently appointed to the California Council on Science and Technology
- a not-for-profit corporation established by the California State Assembly
to examine urgent public policy questions relating to science and technology.
My warmest congratulations, Fran. Furthermore, I'm also delighted to see
in the audience today, someone who has made a real impact at the National
Science Foundation, and who I know will make enormous contributions to
SDSC in his new role as Executive Director, Alan Blatecky. There is no
doubt that SDSC has a world-class leadership team.
A number of you have asked me how I like being at the National Science
Foundation. Well, as the head of an academic unit, I sometimes used to
feel like a graveyard keeper. Yes, I had a respected position with a lot
of people "below" me in the organization - but they didn't seem
to listen very much! Now, as head of a smaller organization of people
but possessing substantially greater resources, I find I suddenly have
a lot more friends around the country than I ever imagined - and they
are all willing to listen to me! Actually, both positions have been greatly
rewarding, and I am really enjoying my new role at NSF.
As a result of the leadership at SDSC and in many of the NPACI partners,
NPACI has played a critical role in the development of our current cyberinfrastructure,
and serves as the critical foundation of resources and human capital assets
on which our future cyberinfrastructure depends.
Our opportunity is to capitalize on this community and on our investments
in the high-end computing infrastructure created through the PACIs and
through our recent investments in the Extensible Terascale Facility, to
develop a coherent, integrated programmatic portfolio of activities that
realize the promise of our cyberinfrastructure vision…………..
- To provide an integrated high end system of hardware, software and
services that….
- Enables scientists and engineers to work on advanced research and
education problems ………………. that otherwise
would not be solvable.
The drivers for our cyberinfrastructure vision are many.
This slide lists only a few. I know that the staff at the NPACI and the
AlIiance partner sites play significant roles in many such activities,
clearly demonstrating the promise and value of partnerships. Examples
include:
- the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation
- the Grid Physics Network (otherwise known as GriPhyN) which is funded
by ITR to develop a virtual data toolkit essential to progress in high
energy physics "data grids"
- and others including those listed here.
The impact of the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) Data Management
Middleware developed by NPACI demonstrates the value of the contributions
your work has made to projects around the world, including the National
Virtual Observatory, the NIH Biomedical Information Research Network,
the UK e-Science effort and dozens more. We seek to build upon and increase
support for exactly this type of work in the future.
In partnership with you, our partners in academe - industry and governments
and organizations around the world, we want to create a portfolio of integrated
cyberinfrastructure activities
1). This integrated cyberinfrastructure builds on shared
hardware resources including computational engines, high bandwidth communication
networks, large data repositories and digital libraries, and sensors and
advanced instruments. Some of this hardware is shared broadly across the
science and engineering community (e.g. computational engines, high performance
networks like Abilene, etc.) and other hardware may be domain specific
(e.g. research instruments and sensors). And, of course, these resources
are distributed across the nation and - at least - in the case of networks,
data stores, and instruments cross international boundaries.
2). On top of this hardware sits a collection of grid middleware tools
and services that make it possible for researchers and educators to discover
and use shared resources in the "hardware" layer.
3). On top of these basic software tools and services sits additional
software that provides development tools and libraries that span scientific
domains. As indicated here, we call both the grid services and the development
tools and libraries "Shared Cybertools". I think you have chosen
to call such activities "Technology Thrusts".
4).And last, but very important in the grand scheme of things, in support
of science and engineering research and education - the raison d'etre
for all of these investments, are the domain specific cybertools - which
you call Application Thrusts.
Talented people are absolutely essential to the creation and smooth operation
of a shared high-end cyberinfrastructure. Collectively, you are developing
future generations of cyberinfrastructure while providing maintenance
and operations support for current systems and applications. It is not
as simple has this diagram would indicate, but for present purposes, this
is the best I've come up with.
I know many of you will have read the recently released
report of the NSF Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure - aka the
Atkins Committee. The Atkins Committee indicated that to achieve the promise
of this cyberinfrastructure vision, and to enable the development and
the continuing evolution of a state-of-the-art operational cyberinfrastructure,
a coordinated set of long-term investments must be made:
- first and foremost in fundamental computer science and engineering
research that will help create future generations of cyberinfrastructure
- in the establishment and continuous upgrade of a state-of-the-art
operational cyberinfrastructure
- in software activities that create shared cybertools at the basic
grid and collaborative tools and service layers and
- in domain specific cybertools………………………..
all of these investments made in support of discovery, learning and innovation
across all fields of science and engineering.
This is the backdrop for our cyberinfrastructure planning.
Let's return now to our more recent terascale investments. A series of
three coordinated investments made as a result of terascale merit review
competitions in FY 2000 and 2001 and an upgrade in FY 2002 have resulted
in the creation of the Extensible Teracale Facility.
ETF currently integrates:
- the Terascale Computing System at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
- and
- the Distributed Terascale Facility resources here at SDSC, and at
NCSA, Caltech and Argonne National Lab.
As you know, these ETF partner resources are now integrated through a
40 GB/s dedicated network connection between extensible hubs in Los Angeles
and Chicago.
In FY 2003, the ETF will be enhanced through the connection
of new partner resources. NSF released a solicitation last week to do
this, and proposals are due June 9th.
Resources to be integrated into the existing ETF architecture might include:
- archival repositories
- digital libraries
- computational resources
- sensor networks.
the resulting ETF architecture will look like this……
Now what about the partnerships - NPACI and the Alliance?
Both are currently funded through September this year (i.e. 2003), at
an approximate level of $35M each.
From now until the end of FY 2004, we will work with you,
our PACI & Alliance partners in a staged transition. We advanced the
first stage last week at NSB. This period involves a final 1-year extension
of the existing NPACI cooperative agreement - we plan to bring the 1-year
extension to the Board for approval at the May meeting. Note that this
additional year of support for the NPACI award is consistent with the
recommendations made by the Atkins Committee regarding PACI.
The final year cooperative agreement will continue support of the Technology
Thrust activities. It will also continue to support the NPACI resource
partners. However, we are strongly encouraging interested NPACI resource
partners to consider competing to connect with ETF through the terascale
extensions activity I described earlier. FY 2004 will mark the last FY
of support for the PACI program.
Support for Domain Specific Cybertools, or what you call Applications
Thrust will be supported at a reduced level in FY'04 through the NPACI
award. However, NSF-wide support for such activities will be increased
in FY'04 when the development of Domain-Specific Cybertools will become
an emphasis in the ITR program. Expect to see a solicitation this summer.
Those of you currently receiving Application Thrust support through NPACI
are strongly encouraged to submit to this competition.
Finally, support for Terascale operations, those being provided by the
Terascale Computing System at Pittsburgh, and the Distributed Terascale
Facility, will also be provided through the end of FY 2004 until ETF is
commissioned.
I cannot emphasize enough - we are not walking away from the considerable
physical and human capital assets created with the NPACI investments.
The past 6 years have created a number of strong groups across the country.
As we move forward to what we plan to be greatly increased funding for
cyberinfrastructure, we need to develop new structures that can accommodate
and deal with the new world of cyberinfrastructure. We will build on the
products and outcomes of these investments as we create a coherent, integrated
portfolio of cyberinfrastructure activities. In the ETF activity, NCSA
and SDSC are joined by additional partners who will provide complimentary
computing-communications-information resources and services in support
of today's science and engineering research and education community, and
future generations of cyberinfrastructure users.
We don't have a complete plan in place yet because we need
to hear a lot more from all segments of the community. In FY 2005 and
further into the future, NSF's cyberinfrastructure planning looks like
this. Beginning in October 2004, appropriate PACI-funded resources and
the sum of the terascale resources - including those at SDSC, NCSA, PSC,
Argonne, Caltech and at our new ETF partner sites - will be allocatable
to the broad user community. NSF will support the management and operations
of such resources and services at our ETF partner sites for 5 years. As
deemed appropriate by NSF's merit review process, management and operations
support may include support for advanced development that is often integral
to the support of cutting-edge cyberinfrastructure resources and services.
Remaining to be worked out is how requests for management and operations
might be submitted to NSF for consideration. To a great extent, this will
be determined by the governance approach adopted for ETF - an approach
in which both our current and future ETF partners have a stake, and in
which future ETF users also have a stake. We will hold a workshop in May
this year and possibly others later, to explore governance scenarios,
both for ETF specifically and for cyberinfrastructure generally.
Now I talked earlier about our plans to develop a coordinated portfolio
of cyberinfrastructure activities. Based on an evolving "needs assessment"
- developed in concert with the science and engineering community of high-end
users - we'll develop what will become an evolving plan to maintain a
cyberinfrastructure at the frontier - to maintain technological leadership
in cyberinfrastructure.
We'll have to balance the merits of upgrading existing cyberinfrastructure
resources against adding new resources at existing or at new sites. Those
decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis in consultation with our
community of stakeholders.
But, depending on the availability of funds, we do anticipate increased
NSF support for
- the development of domain-specific cybertools
- shared cybertools and services
- and of course, the rapidly evolving high-end computing-communications-information
hardware resources on which the enterprise rests.
Finally, we do expect to sustain and increase support for Education,
Outreach and Training. The NPACI has made outstanding contributions here.
I want to use the highly successful EOT program as the nucleus for an
expanded effort to train future scientists and engineers to utilize cyberinfrastructure.
I also want to use it as a model for EOT in other areas of CISE activity.
This chart describes the impact you had in Houston, reaching
3,000 girls at 18 schools in and around the city. We plan to build on
your successes here in an expanded EOT effort in support of cyberinfrastructure.
One of the points the Atkins committee is very clear on is that we must
invest more in the training of future cyberinfrastructure users. The implementation
of a shared high-end cyberinfrastructure is likely to result in a true
paradigm shift in the conduct of science and engineering research and
education. Broad transformation will result - changing the tools, the
methods and the sociology of all fields. The Education, Outreach and Training
opportunities afforded by cyberinfrastructure are broad and far-reaching.
This is a work in progress - we are still working through
some issues - cyberinfrastructure governance and community building being
key, we are mapping out the budgetary implications of our plans…
and the role of NSF investments in a federal-wide context. As some of
you may know, there is increased interest in high-end computing, marked
by the establishment of a government-wide Revitalization Task Force on
High End Computing.
In wrapping up, let me thank you all for the many contributions you have
made. I hope you will continue to work with us to exploit the potential
of cyberinfrastructure. You have helped to create the potential and we
need your continued help to create new levels of capability.
Let me end with a very important point. I understand and value the kind
of community you've built. It is what undergirds and enables all that
you do. Community is exceedingly difficult to build and very easy to destroy.
I will do everything in my power to help you transform the NPACI and Alliance
communities into even stronger cyberinfrastructure communities for the
future.
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