On February 14, the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) and the Software Integration and Visualization Office (SIVO) held a joint Open House that drew a standing-room only crowd. This extension of the quarterly NCCS User Forum meetings featured not only presentations but a demonstration of scientific visualization capabilities and a tour of the high-end computing facilities.

Open House attendees toured the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) facilities, including the 2,560-processor Discover Linux cluster. Photo by Jarrett Cohen.

Phil Webster, CISTO Chief and NCCS Project Manager, and Mike Seablom, SIVO Head, provided overviews of the organizations and their partnership to support scientists and engineers throughout NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Forthcoming NCCS hardware and software upgrades were highlights of the event. Most significant is a follow-on system to Explore, an SGI Altix 3700 system that will be decommissioned when its lease expires on September 30, 2008. As part of a 3-year technology refresh, a competitive acquisition is now in progress to yield the best price-performance. Regardless of vendor, the first stage of the upgrade will have roughly twice Explore's peak capacity, said NCCS Chief Architect Dan Duffy.

The Explore follow-on is being designed for consistency with the main NCCS compute platform–the Discover Linux cluster. Like Discover, the new system will use Intel Xeon processors of similar speed (2.67 to 3.0 GHz); however, they will be quad-core rather than dual-core. The computer will have 2 gigabytes of memory per core, which is twice that of Discover and in keeping with Explore's larger memory. To minimize user disruption, there will be a 2-month overlap between the first upgrade stage and Explore decommission. The NCCS also will support users in migrating applications and data from Explore to Discover or the new system.

Additional NCCS computing environment enhancements planned for 2008 include Discover software upgrades (operating system, compilers, etc.), augmented scratch disk capacity, and a storage server upgrade.

NCCS hardware and software upgrades are being made in the context of a data-centric architecture.

Beyond traditional computing services, the NCCS provides a Data Portal for sharing results with collaborators without requiring NCCS user accounts, said Harper Pryor, CISTO Programs Development Manager. Soon after the Open House, the Data Portal's disk capacity was quadrupled to 120 terabytes. Moreover, using improved disk technology increases storage reliability, and adding more data paths between the portal CPUs and storage array boosts I/O performance.

In helping computing and data sharing users achieve their goals, the NCCS User Services Group is the first line of contact (level-1 support). Its members field questions about system use, code development, application support and make recommendations for optimal research throughput. SIVO's Advanced Software Technology Group (ASTG) provides level-2 support, including code porting, benchmarking, performance tuning, software engineering, and training. The latest training offering is a series of Fortran 2003 classes lasting through this spring, and ASTG may hold a "Boot Camp for Modelers" summer school.

Representing a new paradigm in level-2 support is Modeling Guru, a web-based "knowledge base" for NASA scientific modeling, said ASTG Head Tom Clune. Modeling Guru is currently in beta form at http://modelingguru.nasa.gov. It includes moderated discussions/forums, a document repository, and capabilities for submitting questions and support requests. All NCCS users will have logins by default, using their LDAP passwords. Anyone with relevant interest can request a login as well.

Scientific Visualization Studio Director Horace Mitchell listens to an attendee's question while showing visualizations on a nine-panel "hyperwall." Photo by Jarrett Cohen.

SIVO Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) Director Horace Mitchell took attendees on an exciting journey through Earth and space science visualizations using both the main presentation screen and a nine-panel "hyperwall." The SVS is available for collaborations with NCCS users on developing visualization tools for communication, research and analysis, and operations.

The presentations concluded with SIVO's David Herring, Earth Sciences Division Education and Public Outreach Manager, describing efforts including NASA Earth Observations (NEO), Visible Earth, and the highly popular Earth Observatory. Attendees then departed for an NCCS facilities tour, led by Dan Duffy.