Miracle Consortium: Progress ReportNick Achilleos (UCL), Consortium Chair, Miracle Co-I; Jeremy Yates (UCL), Miracle Co-I

• Brief report prepared according to outline suggested by STFC

• Consortium infrastructure for HPC

• Consortium science

www.ucl.ac.uk/star/research/miracle

Objectives and Vision

• The ‘Miracle’ family of projects are aimed at making use of HPC for the purposes of modelling and characterising astrophysical environments from atomic through cosmological scales.

• This aim naturally provides research links between Miracle teams who work on different aspects of a problem.

Objectives and Vision

• The ‘Miracle’ family of projects are aimed at making use of HPC for the purposes of modelling and characterising astrophysical environments from atomic through cosmological scales.

• This aim naturally provides research links between Miracle teams who work on different aspects of a problem.

• Example:

Atomic and molecular data

Radiative transfer codes Chemistry codes

Hydrodynamic codes

Status of Procurement

Computational Element

Hardware / Resource Description

Status

Production facility - all users

‘Legion’ HPC cluster, UCL RC: 2560 cores x 4 GB

Access ~410 K GBP = 1.8M server hours

Operational, upgrade in progress

SMP cluster - all users

SGI Altix system, UCL RC:

96 cores, 672 GB total

Operational

SMP cluster - local development for UCL molecular group

Dell R900 system, provided for Miracle via UCL RC: 16 cores, 128 GB total

Operational

SMP cluster - local Development Environment (DE) for UCL Miracle users

‘Phalanx’ SGI UV 10 system, UCL Miracle / Astrophysics:

32 cores x 16 GB, 24 TB disk (~70 K GBP)

Imminent - Sept 2010

Project Management Structure

DirectorUCL Information Systems

Mr. G. McLachlan

RC ManagerUCL Information Systems

Ms. C. Gryce

RC Support TeamUCL Information Systems

Miracle Consortium PI / coIUCL Physics and AstronomyProf. S. Miller / Dr. J. Yates

Miracle Consortium LeaderUCL Physics and Astronomy

Dr. N. Achilleos

Miracle Support ProgrammerUCL Physics and Astronomy

Dr. D. Witherick

Miracle Users

Miracle Consortium’s Contribution to Facility

• UCL have given ~200K of support to MC for both science and ops:-Part support for Miracle Support Programmer from Jan 2010 (~2.5 yr total support UCL+STFC).

-Support for Miracle Research Computing Consultant from Jan-01-11 (1.5 yr)

-Support for Leverhulme Research Fellow in Planetary Science from Jan-01-11 (2 x 0.5 yr)

The Miracle Support Programmer, Dr. Dugan Witherick, has academic, management and user-facing experience. He will provide:• Assistance with software / hardware issues for key projects.• Advice to users on: optimum usage of the various Miracle facilities for computing / storage, and Grid Computing.• Infrastructure to promote collaborations, e.g. web deployment of applications, Wiki pages, file shares.• Hardware procurement advice.• Assistance with delivering educational seminars with Miracle Consultant.

Miracle Consortium’s Contribution to Facility

The Miracle Consultant, Dr. Patrick Guio, has both academic and industrial experience. He will provide:• Assistance for the Miracle Support Programmer with migration and maintenance of codes. • Consultation to users on software design and algorithm implementation (important for research). • Assistance with delivering educational seminars on issues such as: good design / programming practice, maintenance and migration of code, computational algorithms.

Miracle Consortium’s Contribution to Facility

• The Leverhulme Fellow, Dr. Caitriona Jackman, has also acquired 1 extra year of RAS support. Her work is high-profile (linked to Cassini Mission at Saturn) and she will develop new data mining techniques within UCL Planetary Physics Laboratory, using the HPC facility.

Miracle Consortium’s Contribution to Facility

Consortium Milestones:

Outcome Deadline Notes

Miracle / UCL-RC MoU - final document

01-Oct-10 Regular meetings between N.A. and C.G.: Final draft for signature being prepared.

Installation and full operations of local Miracle DE at UCL

01-Dec-10 System has been ordered, arrives September. Confign and phased operational mgt needed.

First Miracle Training Seminar

01-Feb-11 D.W. and P.G. preparing materials - costs will be supported by UCL.

Consortium Milestones:

Outcome Deadline Notes

Legion ‘refresh’ phase.

01-Aug-11

More cores per node (12 cf 4) - improvement of service and capability of addressing more challenging problems.

Consortium Science:

• A recent highlight:

Thomas et al, Phys Rev Lett, 2010:‘Upper bound of 0.28 eV on Neutrino Masses from the Largest Photometric Redshift Survey’

Consortium Science:

• Another highlight:

Koskinen et al, Nature, 2007: ‘A stability limit for the atmospheres of extrasolar giant planets’;Koskinen et al, ApJ, 2009: ‘The Upper Atmosphere of HD17156b’

Consortium Science:

• And another:

Decin et al, Nature, 2010: ‘Warm water vapour in the sooty outflow from a luminous carbon star’

Growing interdisciplinary links:

• Growing links between disciplines:

Achilleos et al, MNRAS, 2010: ‘A model of force balance in Saturn’s magnetodisc’ - Invitation to give seminar Oct 2010 at Dept of Applied Mathematics, Univ of St Andrew’s

Summary

• The Miracle - UCL RC relationship has been successful in establishing the Legion production facility, accessible to Miracle users since Feb 2009. Local development capability enhanced through procurement of SMP machines.• Support from UCL recognizes that hardware must be complemented by science and skills transfer - support for Miracle programmer, Miracle Consultant, Leverhulme Fellow.• Miracle Consortium will work with STFC, other consortia to ensure ongoing progress is reported and monitored.