Ref: 031701
1. Introduction
The Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) was brought to life in November 1993 by an initiative of the Committee for Scientific Research (CSR). This initiative was part of CSR's contributions to coordinate the development of the computer science infrastructure in Poland. The Center acts as both the POZnan Metropolitan Area Network (POZMAN)operator and as a high performance computing provider. Besides its day to day activities PSNC is also a significant research center. It concentrates all the scientific research in the city of Poznan.
In this paper we briefly describe both the POZMAN network and the computing resources of PSNC. The services of PSNC and its research activities will also be described.
2. High performance networking in PSNC
PSNC is the operator of the POZMAN network. The POZMAN network is based on its own cable structure and uses two technologies: ATM and FDDI.
PSNC currently owns, within the POZMAN network, a fibre optic cable infrastructure of a total length of 129 km and it leases an additional 47 km from other Poznan institutions. The backbone network was built with monomode (SM) fibre optic wire, however, the access network was built with mixed wires: monomode and multimode (MM). This infrastructure connects all of the scientific institutions in Poznan and 11 Town Offices. The backbone of the FDDI network consists of 21 3COM NetBuilder II routers. In parallel to the FDDI network there are 4 ATM nodes. The ATM network consists of 2 Fore ASX-200BX switches with 2 PowerHub 6000 access switches and 2 3COM CELLplex 7000 switches with 5 LinkSwitch 2700 access switches and 1 Lanplex 2500 access switch. The connection between switches and NetBuilder II routers is of type OC-3 and is based on SM and MM fibre optic cables. Within this network some virtual networks based on the LANE 1.0 standard have been set up: network for city administration and network for connecting the scientific community. Users are connected to the POZMAN network using the following interfaces: ATM (12 ports), FDDI (16 ports), Ethernet (213 ports), synchronous interfaces with a maximum speed of 2 Mb/s (10 ports) and asynchronous interfaces with maximum speed of 33.6 kb/s (48 ports). Currently there are more than 4000 computers connected to the network according to a DNS statistic. POZMAN is connected to the following national operators: NASK, POLPAK-T, TEL-ENERGO and KOLPAK.
The center for managing the network is equipment with 2 management platforms: SunNet Manager on the SUN IPX workstation and NetView 6000 on the IBM RISC/6000 390 workstation. On these platforms the following applications for managing the network devices were installed: Transcend Enterprise Manager for Unix, for 3COM equipment; ForeView for Fore System equipment and one of our own which supports network operators.
Each node of the POZMAN network is equipped with UPS 2000VA from APC with a SNMP based protocol for remote control and a humidity and temperature module. PSNC maintains 24 hour supervision over the functioning of the network and computing resources. Technical team dispose of protocol analyzer type K1102 from Siemens, optical reflectometer type MW9070A and optical powermeter type ML9002A from Anritsu and an automatic fusion slicer type FSU 925RTC from Ericsson.
Further development of the POZMAN network will eventually change to ATM technology. The planned backbone structure of the POZMAN network will be built with ATM switches connecting OC-12 interfaces working with data transfer 622 Mb/s in 1997-98. NetBuilder II routers with FDDI interfaces will be moved to campus networks and ATM switches will be installed in their place.
At the same time PSNC is designing a new kind of access to its resources via cable television (HFC structured CATV), additionally, PSNC conducts research and development programs like: implementation of the environment control applications (remote control and graphical viewing of UPS, air conditioning and security systems) and trap management systems as well as an application which enables the viewing of the FDDI ring. PSNC is also a beta test site for 3COM equipment. PSNC is the organiser of the largest conference on networking (Metropolitan Area Network in Science, Industry and Government - POLMAN) in Poland . During this conference there was an exhibition of network products which were being used to maintain the conference. This year the network illustrated the usage of the virtual net concept in a heterogeneous environment. Also at this conference PSNC presented the pilot ATM 34 Mb/s network which was built in SDH 622 Mb/s communication environment of TEL-ENERGO operators. The network connected 4 cities: Warsaw, Poznan, Lodz and Katowice.
3. High performance computing in PSNC
The scientific environment of Poznan requires a large amount of computations. The activities of some scientific areas such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, biotechnology, computer science and engineering require computational services.
Some examples of the research conducted by the above mentioned include:
· Optimization and artificial intelligence in science, technology and
medicine,
· Sequential and pararallel algorithms for DNA sequencing,
· The genetic backgrounds of laying hen performance traits,
· The theoretical studies of structure, energetics and thermodynamic
properties of molecules and anions containing heavy elements,
· Computer simulations of selected models of condensed matter
systems,
· Ab initio calculations of small molecules,<
· Statics and dynamics of shell structures.
Our Center also gives access to its computational resources to other
scientific communities in Poland. The current number of all users on all
systems is 1500 and is increasing. To fulfill the requirements of such
different groups of users, PSNC has installed a whole range of computer
architectures :
· Scalar
· SGI Power Challenge with 12 R8000 processors and 1 GB of RAM,
· SGI Power Challenge with 4 R10000 processors and 256 MB of RAM,
· Parallel vector
· Cray J90 with 16 processors and 4 GB of RAM,
· Cray Y-MP EL with 4 processors and 512 MB of RAM,
· Distributed memory system
· IBM SP-2 with 1 wide (128 MB) and 14 thin nodes (64 MB).
It is being installed as a massive parallel processing system: Cray T3E-900. This gives our users a new kind of architecture, with 6 processor elements and 6*128 MB of RAM.
The average performance of all of the computer systems (installed at PSNC) is about 18 GFlops. Keeping in mind the requirements of our users and the high efficiency of computer systems, the computers were connected with fast networks : FDDI, ATM, HIPPI.
The FDDI resource ring is used mainly by users to access computers. The ATM network is used for graphics and multimedia applications and the HIPPI network allows an increase in the performance of process-process communications in a distributed environment as well as connecting computer systems into clusters.
The network server (AUSPEX NS 7000/500) fills an important role: The archive system (tape and optical disk archives with a capacity up to 2 TB) and a multimedia laboratory (SGI Onyx, 5 SGI Indigo-2, 3 SGI Indy workstations). The multimedia laboratory allows the results of computations to be seen and animated as well as organizes some tutorials and training sessions for users who then present the knowledge obtained on the WWW as a kind of self-learning tool.
PSNC meets the requirements of users by offering a wide range of software :
· system software
· facilitating the managing and tuning of operating systems,
· allowing to perform tasks in a batch environment (NQS, LSF, Load
Leveler),
· programming tools
· programming languages (Fortran 77, Fortran 90, HPF, C, C++, Pascal),
· programming support (debuggers, preprocessors and packages which allows
the user to optimize and to parallel written source code),
· libraries of math, scientific, graphic and distributed programming,
· specialized applications for data visualization (AVS, Open Inventor),
chemistry and molecular physics (Gaussian 94, BIOSYM, SYBYL, GAMESS, AMBER),
· engineering (NASTRAN, ABAQUS),
· mathematics (MAPLE, MATLAB, SAS, NAG Library, NAG Graphics).
The above described complex environment needs some software tools that will enable a user to access it in the simplest manner and use it with the highest efficiency and performance. Thus, we have started our way to the metacomputing idea. The realization of this idea is one of the main research objectives in PSNC. It requires extensive research to be conducted in the fields of algorithms and tools which will enable the computation in a heterogeneous metacomputing environment.
Our first step in this direction is to unify the access to different metacomputer resources. We propose using Web technology to achieve this goal. This proposal comes from the belief that the explosive turnover in Web languages and protocols has begun to cool down. Today HTML, Java and VRML have now emerged as relatively stable basis for long term planning and development. It seems obvious that, if we are to build, maintain and use such a complex high performance metacomputing (HPM) environment effectively, the Web must be incorporated into it. Our primary challenge is to retarget World Wide Web-computing models to meet the performance and reliability requirements of the (HPM) environment and applications.
We therefore propose that our metacomputer is a collaboratory, multi-user, multi-server, problem solving environment on the local (or wide) area network. This would be based on the existing HPM technologies for local computational backends and the evolving Web technologies for user interfaces, system-wide coordination within the local, national and even world-wide basis. Thus, in our view the metacomputer is a set of specialized Web servers. We link these servers together using generalized Web technologies to allow executable program components to be published as services, and so create a distributed problem solving environment.
The system architecture is built in three layers. The first layer defines computation and communication primitives, initially based on existing Web standards (HTML, CGI, Java) to provide a publication model of computation. It is nothing more than an extension of a computing environment for heterogeneous and distributed high performance computing extended by Web technology.
As the system grows, rather than building problem solving environments on top of the software, the second layer will add more advanced client paradigms to this basis. In this layer, advanced client codes, called agents, may take on server functionality thus becoming autonomous participants in the computing. Increases in client-code mobility and flexibility will also require the addition of "brokers" to mediate the interchange of different data formats between participants in a computing process. This interpolating environment will be a collection of agent based programs to implement interoperability. This layer is still under construction and covers a large part of our research activities.
The third layer serves for running the applications and writing parallel, distributed programs by users. It provides a set of programming tools (i.e. tools for programming with MPI) and environments for computing specific problems. These domain-specific environments range from computational chemistry, biology and other applications to complex ones including weather forecasting, image processing etc.
4. PSNC services
The advanced networking infrastructure increases the user's requirements regarding network services. Therefore, together with familiar, easy to implement Internet services and some information systems based on the WWW interface, more research is being conducted at PSNC regarding telematic services which is aimed at widening the range of services provided with a new generation of applications.
The standard Internet services provided by POZMAN are: WWW, DNS, News, Anonymous FTP, X.500 and e-mail. The WWW server in the POZMAN network has been operating since 1995; providing information about resources and services which also includes a mirror of the Windows Network Application Index. The extended anonymous ftp server provides system and application software either as a local resource on the network server or as a mirror of the most interesting servers in the world. Thanks to this, the quality of the user's access to these types of resources is enhanced as well as there being a decreased load of national and international connections. PSNC also performs the regional coordination of the X.500 service, which provides data on scientists from the Poznan scientific community.
Special attention is given to allow users to have interactive access to bibliographic databases installed at PSNC. The databases installed are: Current Contents (all 6 series), Science Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Index. The Metropolitan Area Network is also an integrated platform for the Poznan Scientific Libraries Foundation established by 12 Poznan universities and academies with financial support from the Mellon Foundation.
Included in the group of information services developed at PSNC is the Multimedia City Guide (MCG). It is accessible in the Internet within WWW services. The basic goal of MCG is to collect all information regarding the city of Poznan and to store it in one electronic publication guide which broadcasts it in a natural, multimedia form: when a new film is released, you see a clip from this film; when a musical concert is announced, there are audio fragments of some of the music, etc. MCG has an open structure, designed in such a way that each new piece of information is matched to its existing section. Therefore, in the MCG there is a place for information regarding business, culture, science and education, health and social care, tourism, administration, communication, etc. To help citizens to get the most from their city, PSNC is in close cooperation with the City Administration. Thanks to this the content of the MCG is filled with information provided by different branches of the city: newspaper and magazine press editors, statistic offices, communication, administration as well as museums, theaters, cinemas and entertainment institutions. Additionally, part of the information presented by the service is held in databases. Information stored there is used for the dynamic generation of WWW pages which asks the user to answer questions thereby creating a page in real time. This kind of service is based on automatic data updating created by an information provider, also remotely via the network. Services provided in this way include the city communication guide and the weather forecast for the region and the country.
In the multimedia laboratory there are some projects being developing related to the preparation of broadband services which will provide users with new telematic applications, interactive work, videoconferencing, cooperation within the network, entertainment, etc. The project is being developed in close association with the local CATV operator.
5. Summary
The Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center plays a significant role in the Polish science information infrastructure. Still, the growing needs of the Poznan academic society are always fulfilled by the increasing computational power of the metacomputer together with the high throughput and low latency of both local and metropolitan area networks. PSNC, as always, is hungry for new technology and solutions. This guarantees that all users can conduct scientific research on a world-wide level.
Copyright EUNIS 1997 Y.E.