1. Science Support for Phase 4 Dr Alan D Simpson HPCx Project Director EPCC Technical Director

2. 2November 2008HPCx User Group Overview User Support Team Phase 4 Complementary Capability Computing Science Support

3. 3November 2008HPCx User Group User Support Team Now fully staffed Liz Sim: User Support Manager started mid-April –Initially worked in software engineering –8 years experience in Service Support –Commercial background at Sun and Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) supporting internal & external clients Andy Turner: started in July –Background in Computational Chemistry research –Support and training on Chemistry cluster Irina Nazarova –12 years at EPCC –Expertise in web, reporting and publicity

4. 4November 2008HPCx User Group Phase 4 Overview EPSRC are funding a 14-month extension to HPCx –New end-date January 2010 Upgrade to Power 5+ –Reduced running costs (power and maintenance) Decreasing science support activity Focus on Complementary Capability Computing –Learn about exploiting multiple services

5. 5November 2008HPCx User Group Hardware Upgrade Planned as part of Phase 4 Cluster of 120 IBM System p5 Model 575+ servers –Each node contains 16 * 1.9GHz processors –118 nodes will be equipped with 32Gb memory –Remaining 2 nodes (32 processors) will have 128Gb memory to permit large memory jobs Minimal downtime expected –No change to front-ends, switches or filesystems More details in IBM Talk

6. 6November 2008HPCx User Group Complementary Capability Computing Maximise benefits from HECToR and HPCx –For benefit of UK computational research Workshop on Complementary Capability proposal –Simple transfer of resources Agreed and advertised –Advance booking Now working –Queues for long jobs on HPCx Increasingly popular –Short debugging queues on HPCx >1000 jobs per month

7. 7November 2008HPCx User Group Complementarity Challenge Call EPSRC Call raised in line with the decision to extend the HPCx service into 2010 –Focus on complementary capability computing –12 month grants available starting January 2009 –Call ran from 30th July to 11 th Sep 2008 11 technical assessments have been completed and returned to prospective applicants –HPCx time totalling around 30 million AUs has been requested as a result of this call Funding decisions due in 2008

8. 8November 2008HPCx User Group Phase 4 Staffing Number of Science Support staff tapers down throughout Phase 4 –to keep total cost of extension as low as possible Have agreed with EPSRC that this profile is flexible –responding to user needs Key target will be to provide support for Complementarity Challenge projects 20081Q092Q093Q094Q09 FTEs118642

9. 9November 2008HPCx User Group Principles of Science Support No formal Annual Plan –Allowing focus on responsive support Helpdesk will remain the key element of support throughout Phase 4 Reduced effort available for –Training: only if leveraged with other activities –Technical Reports: to aid understanding of Complementarity and future services –Terascaling: modest effort e.g., in support of Complementary Challenge projects

10. 10November 2008HPCx User Group Support for Complementarity Key justification for Phase 4 was exploring novel methods of exploiting HPC systems –Help EPSRC plan for future services Most of Science Support effort will be targeted towards this New support team: Complementarity –Led by Alan Gray Please contact us if you may want such support –support@hpcx.ac.uk