6.23.2010

NCSA HPC Data Center Workshop

I was fortunate enough to attend the first day of the NCSA's biennial workshop: Building the Data Center of the Future. It was a great event and absolutely worth every penny; it was completely free! My notes from the event are presented below.


It's 07:44; check-in begins in 16 minutes. Having scoped out the breakfast continental, I'm firmly set on acquiring one of the little wine-glass parfaits.

Break. The parfaits were for another group; I sincerely wish I'd attempted bribing one of the servers. The IBM speaker was a regrettably poor orator: his presentation and reasoning were sound, but his tone and manner were tedious and not the least bit engaging. However, I very much enjoyed the juxtaposition of IBM's presentation, which alleged that water cooling is the only way to proceed in high-end computing applications, with Microsoft's presentation, in which Shaun Harris, Microsoft's Principal Power Systems Architect, argued for highly modular, containerized, air cooled data centers with sparser computer nodes running hotter, rather than denser nodes running cooler. Indeed, according to Shaun, he was tasked by his manager to question everything in data center best practices, leaving no stone unturned, to produce their fourth generation data center solution. Really, the two talks made for a very nice gestalt.

Lunch. The last presentation, by Nova, was about the construction and design of the new National Petascale Computing Facility (NPCF), which will house the Blue Waters sustained petaflop supercomputer next year. It was an excellent presentation, and seeing the pictures of the facility made the idea of visiting it this afternoon all the more exciting.

A member of the National Human Genome Research center, two NCSA members, a professor at SIU, and a professor at UIUC sat at my table. Two interesting problems came up in conversation: the first was the difficulty of storing and moving enormous amounts of data, made particularly difficult by the memory practices of scientists, who wish to preserve data far beyond what seems useful to IT staff; the second was the difficulty of running code with tight synchronization requirements in inherently asynchronous environments, such as the "cloud," thus preventing the use of the web as a highly distributed computing platform for most scientific research. The first of these problems seemingly requires the application of brute-force: more bandwidth, more storage. However, this, as told by my fellow attendee, is simply not the case. The second of the two problems appears as though it could be solved by layered abstraction, a very fundamental idea in computing. However, again, I am told this approach is insufficient.

As I didn't wish to be a nuisance, I didn't press matters further. Still, that won't stop me from investigating the circumstances and background of both problems to form my own conclusions. For the moment, this has me terribly distracted.

19:04. The ominously scheduled "three-hour tour" of the Blue Waters facilities was awesome. The NPCF is enormous and fantastic; I've never seen a room so large as that of the nearly-empty data center floor. Of course, the mechanical and electrical facilities in the basement were positively epic, and the hum of the many 110 kV and 33 kV transformers was deafening; our tour guide was forced to yell over the noise. On top of all this, we also visited the Abbot Power Plant, capable of generating over 80 MW or powering nearly the entire campus, and the university's central water chilling facility, which provides air handling service to most of the campus, of which Blue Waters is merely a single, albeit large, recipient. Frankly, it was a lot to take in, but without seeing all three sites, it would be impossible to fathom the monumental effort that went into Blue Waters, let alone grasp the complexity of the system or the collective expertise required to maintain it.

At the end of the tour, we returned to the NPCF for the evening reception. Looking out the glass façade from the floating staircase of the NPCF, Merlot and oeur d'oeuvres in hand, I couldn't help but think this would be the first and last time I would ever be allowed to set foot in that beautiful facility. Of course, very few people ever will. Indeed, entry requires a magnetic card, which, in turn, activates an iris scan, but this only gets you into the anteroom. The rotating door into the facility, itself, contains a pressure sensitive plate in the floor which determines the weight of its occupants. In the event that multiple people should attempt to simultaneously enter the facility, their combined weight would exceed the weight of the authorized worker whose card and iris were scanned, and they would remain locked in the antechamber. Of course, there exist other scenarios in which this mechanism might prevent entry (a la Demolition Man), but I doubt the facility's personnel will want to give that much thought.

All in all, it was a fantastic workshop, and considering registration was free, I can't understand anyone not wanting to attend. Perhaps I'll be able to attend the next one in 2012. Who knows? I may again, one day, set foot inside the NPCF after all. And what a treat it would be with Blue Waters fully operational!

65 comments:

  1. Due to cost-efficiency and less hands-on management, data own-ers are outsourcing their data to the cloud which can provide ac-cess to the data as a service. An efficient and secure data sharing framework using homomorphic encryption in the cloud.
    iDeals data room

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very nice article, about cyber protection y can take info from this site.
    security-online

    ReplyDelete
  3. A powerlessness administration program exists to guarantee that current security vulnerabilities are constantly fixed to protect the site. https://goo.gl/T1KELS

    ReplyDelete
  4. I really like to attend seminars. After all, you can get a lot of new knowledge and useful contacts.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is a very interesting article. I am looking for information about cyber security. Is possible to use your information for my research?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Somewhere in between tape media and disk storage in terms of ease of recovery are optical disks. Assuming your optical disks are well organized, you can essentially spend a day migrating data from optical disks back onto the systems.
    Self Storage

    ReplyDelete
  7. you could write a detailed description of this program, really want to participate. Maybe I'll call my friends

    ReplyDelete
  8. The parfaits were for another group; I sincerely wish I'd attempted bribing one of the servers. The IBM speaker was a regrettably poor orator: his presentation and reasoning were sound, but his tone and manner were tedious and not the least bit engaging.
    virtual employee

    ReplyDelete
  9. The rotating door into the facility, itself, contains a pressure sensitive plate in the floor which determines the weight of its occupants.
    outsourced portfolio manager

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks for a very interesting blog. What else may I get that kind of info written in such a perfect approach? I’ve a undertaking that I am simply now operating on, and I have been at the look out for such info. Odzyskiwanie danych Łódź

    ReplyDelete
  11. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!. odzyskiwanie danych Warszawa

    ReplyDelete
  12. Huge Data is the sea of information now accessible to organizations by means of the social web, machine information and value-based information.data science course in pune

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you so much for helping me out to find the Data science course in Mumbai
    Organisations and introducing reputed stalwarts in the industry dealing with data analyzing & assorting it in a structured and precise manner. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to view more from you.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Attend The Data Science Courses in Bangalore From ExcelR. Practical Data Science Courses in Bangalore Sessions With Assured Placement Support From Experienced Faculty. ExcelR Offers The Data Science Courses in Bangalore.
    ExcelR Data Science Course Bangalore

    ReplyDelete

  15. Excelr is providing emerging & trending technology training, such as for data science, Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, AWS, Tableau, Digital Marketing. Excelr is standing as a leader in providing quality training on top demanding technologies in 2019. Excelr`s versatile training is making a huge difference all across the globe. Enable ?business analytics? skills in you, and the trainers who were delivering training on these are industry stalwarts. Get certification on "
    data science training institute in hyderabad
    "
    and get trained with Excelr.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Such a very useful Blog. Very interesting to read this article. I have learn some new information.thanks for sharing. know more about

    ReplyDelete
  17. This is also a very good post which I really enjoyed reading. It is not every day that I have the possibility to see something like this..
    ExcelR data science

    ReplyDelete
  18. After reading your article I was amazed. I know that you explain it very well. And I hope that other readers will also experience how I feel after reading your article.
    data analytics course mumbai
    data science interview questions

    ReplyDelete
  19. This is a wonderful article, Given so much info in it, These type of articles keeps the users interest in the website, and keep on sharing more ... good luck.
    courses in business analytics

    data science course in mumbai

    data analytics courses

    data science interview questions

    ReplyDelete

  20. I finally found great post here.I will get back here. I just added your blog to my bookmark sites. thanks.Quality posts is the crucial to invite the visitors to visit the web page, that's what this web page is providing.
    data analytics courses
    ExcelR Data Science training in Mumbai
    data science interview questions
    ExcelR Business Analytics courses in Mumbai

    ReplyDelete
  21. This is a wonderful article, Given so much info in it, These type of articles keeps the users interest in the website, and keep on sharing more ... good luck.
    business analytics course

    data analytics courses

    data science interview questions

    data science course in mumbai

    ReplyDelete
  22. Thanks for such a great post and the review, I am totally impressed! Keep stuff like this coming.

    data science course
    360DigiTMG

    ReplyDelete
  23. You have explained the concept really well. Was looking for this information from a while & luckily I stumbled upon your post. Looking forward for more of such informative updates from you
    Data Science Training In Hyderabad
    Data Science Course In Hyderabad

    ReplyDelete
  24. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

  25. After reading your blog I think you have good information about data centre workshop. I would like to share this information with my friends who need this. Thanks for this blog. Fiber Optic Solutions Suppliers

    ReplyDelete

  26. Really nice and interesting post. I was looking for this kind of information and enjoyed reading this one. Keep posting. Thanks for sharing
    data scientist course

    ReplyDelete
  27. I am really happy with your blog because your article is very unique and powerful for new reader.data science course in Hyderabad

    ReplyDelete
  28. Excellent article. Very interesting to read. I really love to read such a nice article. Thanks! keep rocking Best data science courses in hyerabad

    ReplyDelete
  29. I have express a few of the articles on your website now, and I really like your style of blogging. I added it to my favorite’s blog site list and will be checking back soon…
    machine learning courses in bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  30. Added experience can bring a hike in the salary. Thus, more people are opting for building a career in this field as it aims at accomplishing and maintaining the welfare and well being of both home and family life. data science course in india

    ReplyDelete
  31. Awesome blog. I enjoyed reading your articles. This is truly a great read for me. I have bookmarked it and I am looking forward to reading new articles. Keep up the good work!data scientist course in pune

    ReplyDelete
  32. I Want to leave a little comment to support and wish you the best of luck.we wish you the best of luck in all your blogging endeavors.Business Analytics course in bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  33. ACK Imaging provides Cartridge Refilling Solution In Gurgaon and Best Printing ProductsACK Imaging

    ReplyDelete
  34. Stupendous blog huge applause to the blogger and hoping you to come up with such an extraordinary content in future. Surely, this post will inspire many aspirants who are very keen in gaining the knowledge. Expecting many more contents with lot more curiosity further.

    data science course in bangalore with placement

    ReplyDelete
  35. In the wake of perusing your article, I was astounded. I realize that you clarify it well overall. What's more, I trust that different perusers will likewise encounter how I feel in the wake of perusing your article.
    data analytics course in hyderabad

    ReplyDelete
  36. Nice blog and informative content. Really useful for many people, I bookmarked your website for further blogs. Thanks, you.
    Data Scientist Training in Hyderabad

    ReplyDelete
  37. I truly like you're composing style, incredible data, thankyou for posting. business analytics course in mysore

    ReplyDelete
  38. It is extremely nice to see the greatest details presented in an easy and understanding manner.
    data science training institute in hyderabad

    ReplyDelete
  39. Thanks for posting the best information and the blog is very good and the blog is very good.data analytics course in rajkot

    ReplyDelete
  40. Thanks for posting the best information and the blog is very good and.data science course in udaipur

    ReplyDelete
  41. The NCSA HPC Data Center Workshop was an eye-opening event. The many viewpoints on data center design and computing difficulties prompted me to learn more about these topics. The Blue Waters facility tour was breathtaking. I am grateful for the chance to participate in this event.
    Data Analytics Courses in India

    ReplyDelete
  42. Thank you so much for providing us your precious notes on the NCSAHPC data centre workshop.

    n today's dynamic data-driven landscape, our institution stands out as a leader, offering the most comprehensive Data Analytics Courses in Chandigarh . For those interested in gaining invaluable knowledge and skills in this field, we invite you to explore further at Top 5 Data Analytics Courses in Chandigarh

    ReplyDelete
  43. For me, this was a really enjoyable post. I have it bookmarked and am eager to read more things from it. Keep up the excellent work.
    Data Analytics Courses in Agra


    ReplyDelete
  44. This detailed account of the NCSA HPC Data Center Workshop provides valuable insights into the world of high-performance computing and data center design. A captivating read for tech enthusiasts!
    Is iim skills fake?

    ReplyDelete
  45. You did an extremely good job of explaining the idea. I spent some time looking for this information before fortunately finding your site. I anticipate reading more insightful updates from you.
    Data Analytics Courses in Agra

    ReplyDelete
  46. The NCSA HPC Data Center Workshop seems to be a groundbreaking initiative in the realm of high-performance computing. Its focus on fostering collaboration and advancing research is truly commendable."
    Digital Marketing Courses in Hamburg

    ReplyDelete
  47. The NCSA HPC Data Center Workshop is a valuable resource for professionals looking to enhance their knowledge of high-performance computing and data management in research and industry. In addition, for those interested in data analytics, London offers a range of top-notch Data Analytics courses that equip individuals with the skills to analyze and derive insights from complex datasets. Please also Digital Marketing Courses in London.

    ReplyDelete
  48. The article is truly amazing, offering an abundance of information.
    daa Analytics courses in leeds

    ReplyDelete
  49. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete

  50. Thank you for sharing your insightful and engaging experience at the NCSA HPC Data Center Workshop. Your vivid descriptions made the event come alive. Great read.

    How Digital marketing is changing business

    ReplyDelete
  51. This is a great inspiring article. I am pretty much pleased with your good work. You put really very helpful information. Keep it up. Keep blogging. Looking to reading your next post.
    Investment Banking courses in bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  52. Nice information, valuable and excellent design, as share good stuff with good ideas and concepts, lots of great information and inspiration, both of which I need, thanks to offer such a helpful information here. best digital marketing agency in Hyderabad

    ReplyDelete