Description

The development of an Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory joins 5 institutions

• Washington University
• Rutgers University
• National Center of Supercomputing Applications
• University of Chicago
• University of Illinois

in an NSF funded Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence program.

The aims of the collaboratory are to develop tools for the collaborative research into problems of relativistic astrophysics.

Central to the idea of the Collaboratory is the development of an Astrophysics Portal for the management and submission of large scale simulations using a wide range of computer resources. The portal is deployed on the ASC Grid, a testbed of supercomputing resources including machines at the NCSA, AHPCC, AEI, Washington University and SDSC.

ASC and Cactus

The development of the Astrophysics Simulation Collaboratory is being pursued with the involvement of the Cactus Team and collaborators. The ASC project will benefit Cactus mainly through the development of

Simulation Portal

The ASC portal is being built specifically around the Cactus code, although many of the components will be applicable to general simulation portals. This portal will not only bring new users to Cactus, but will help existing users make full and easy use of their available computing resources. We expect the ASC portal to serve as a prototype for a general Cactus Portal. The portal includes interfaces for locating resources, remote authentication, code composition, simulation launching on single or multiple machines, monitoring and visualization, as well as archiving machine and simulation details. The technologies incorporated include Globus, GSI, Java Beans, JSP, Java COG, MyProxy, GPDK, TomCat, and Stronghold.

(Click picture for larger view)

Adaptive Mesh Refinement

The ASC are developing a thorn PAGH to provide a driver with adaptive and fixed mesh refinement capabilities. PAGH uses the GrACE library.

IO and Visualization

The ASC are also developing thorns capable of outputing AMR data for visualization and checkpointing, as well as tools for easily visualizing data from different mesh levels.

ASC Links

• ASC Portal homepage
• Award page
• Powerpoint presentation about the ASC Portal
• Low level Powerpoint slides about the ASC Portal.
• Cluster Computing paper which contains some details about the ASC Portal.
• HPDC10 Submission detailing the design of the ASC Portal.
• For more information about the ASC Project, contact Wai-Mo Suen at wms@wugrav.wustl.edu