High Performance Computing Facility Operational Assessment 2013 Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility

摘要

Oak Ridge National Laboratorys (ORNLs) Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) leads the way in providing the most powerful computing resource in the United States for open science. In calendar year (CY) 2013 the OLCF accepted the upgrade of the Cray XT Jaguar to the hybrid-architecture Cray XK7 Titan, which delivers a peak performance of more than 27 petaflops. The effectiveness with which this resource was delivered is demonstrated by the business result metrics, which were met or exceeded in all cases. At years end, the OLCF delivered all of the compute hours committed to the three major allocation programs: 2.4 billion Titan core-hours were used by Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE), ASCR Leadership Computing Challenge (ALCC), and Directors Discretionary (DD) projects. OLCF computational resources support scientific research through production simulation across many scientific domains, providing the key computing and data resources that are critical to their success. Despite the significant disruptions necessary for the Titan upgrade, users continue to express great satisfaction with the OLCF overall. As leadership systems grow in size, so potentially does the amount of critical data generated during and after the simulations. These data are, along with publications, the intellectual capital of the research communities. The OLCF continues to focus attention on ways to facilitate scientific accomplishments through efforts to improve generation and movement of data, its access and analysis. In 2013 the OLCF formalized the addition of data liaisons to its science support team and initiated a beta-test of a new DD project typethe data projectas the facility continues to seek to understand the ways in which data creation, storage, curation, exploration, and technical support lead to scientific insight. OLCF users scientific and technical accomplishments are wide-ranging. Several representative highlights are presented in this report and serve to communicate how the OLCF is advancing two of DOEs four strategic goals, and associated targeted outcomes, as stated in the U.S. Department of Energy Strategic Plan (May 2011). User research campaigns resulted in two hundred sixty-two publications in 2013, including articles in Nature, Nature Communications, and Nature Scientific Reports. Effective operations of the OLCF play a key role in the scientific missions and accomplishments of its users. This Operational Assessment Report (OAR) delineates the policies, procedures, and innovations implemented by the OLCF to continue delivering a multipetaflop resource for cutting-edge research. This report covers CY2013, which, unless otherwise specified, denotes January 1, 2013, through December 31, 2013.