DEFENSE

Researchers from LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, will showcase University research that applies computational science in unique and dynamic ways to different areas of academia during the annual Supercomputing Conference in Austin, Texas. CCT will host a booth at the conference, which lasts Nov. 15-21, to showcase different projects underway at CCT and other departments at LSU that use the advanced cyberinfrastructure available on campus. LSU projects for Supercomputing Conference 2008 relate to the booth theme, “Advancing Society Through Computation & Technology.” “Supercomputing Conference gives us a chance to exhibit LSU research alongside other universities from around the country and the world, showing that we are a leader in applying high-performance computing, cyberinfrastructure, emerging technologies and software to solve complex problems in disciplines from astrophysics to the arts,” said CCT Interim Director Stephen David Beck. “While here, we can also learn about the latest trends in the industry and look for opportunities to collaborate with partners on new and exciting projects.” CCT will highlight CyberTools, a National Science Foundation-funded collaboration among faculty from nine Louisiana universities to develop unique work packages and applications that will further advances in science and engineering research while allowing scientists to use advanced cyberinfrastructure more effectively. Gabrielle Allen, a professor with CCT and LSU’s Department of Computer Science, serves as principal investigator on the CyberTools project. The booth also will feature information on Louisiana’s integration onto the TeraGrid, a backbone of national cyberinfrastructure through the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI. LONI Executive Director Charlie McMahon will attend Supercomputing 2008 to give information on LONI and its activities on TeraGrid. Daniel S. Katz, a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who also is the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid Grid Infrastructure Group Director of Science and oversees the Cyberinfrastructure Development division within CCT, which conducts research and work relating to TeraGrid, will talk about TeraGrid and its mission. TeraGrid incorporates supercomputing resources from 11 partner sites around the country, and LONI became the newest TeraGrid member in late 2007, accepting the first users in February 2008. CCT Executive Director Jarek Nabrzyski will give a talk on the LONI Institute, a collaboration of researchers among the six LONI sites that creates a multi-disciplinary environment, with CCT as its central hub. Each university is in the process of hiring two new faculty members and one new computational scientist, who will work as members of the virtual institute. This research collaborative will significantly enhance Louisiana’s scientific and economic development capacity. LONI Institute is funded through the Louisiana Board of Regents’ Post-Katrina Support Fund Initiative, as well as from matching funds from all universities involved. Total funding for the LONI Institute is $15 million. CCT faculty working with Professor Thomas Sterling, CCT and LSU Department of Computer Science, will give information on ParalleX, a next-generation model for parallel computing. The ParalleX research group is investigating advanced parallel computer architecture and programming environments to eliminate constraints and program petascale-class machines in ways that incorporate multiple elements effectively. ParalleX is designed to make areas such as synchronization, scheduling, manual data layout and messaging more efficient for researchers. Beck will discuss the University’s AVATAR: Arts, Visualization, Advanced Technologies and Research Initiative, which seeks to develop curricula in digital media and recruit up to 12 new faculty members who specialize in this area to LSU. Beck, who is a professor in the LSU School of Music, is one of the faculty members who developed the AVATAR initiative on campus. CCT researchers Erik Schnetter and Steve Brandt will conduct a 3-D simulation of two black holes colliding in a large-scale computing demonstration of the Cactus Computational Toolkit. They will conduct this simulation on 5,832 cores using the Supercomputing Conference supercomputer, SICORTEX, and the demonstration is expected to run at about a Teraflop of sustained computing power. This will be one of the largest simulations taking place at the conference. Other projects CCT faculty and staff will showcase include computer science Professor Tevfik Kosar’s PetaShare project, a National Science Foundation-sponsored effort to build a distributed data archival, analysis and visualization infrastructure for data-intensive, collaborative research and a talk on advanced computer graphics and geometric modeling. To view a complete schedule of LSU demonstrations taking place at Supercomputing Conference 2008, please visit its Web site. For more information on CCT research projects, please visit its Web site , or contact CCT Manager of Public Relations Kristen Sunde at 225-578-3469.