SCIENCE

University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez Department of Mechanical Engineering

With more than 300 miles of palm and coconut tree-lined shores, when it comes to natural beauty and abundance from the sea, Puerto Rico lives up to its name: “Rich Port.” For local researchers who depend on high performance computing (HPC), the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid is their richest port.

TeraGrid’s Director of Education, Outreach, and Training, Scott Lathrop (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), recently welcomed more than 50 students, faculty, and staff from Puerto Rican universities who participated in two six-hour HPC workshops. The first session was held in San Juan near the Rio Piedras campus, and the second on the Mayaguez campus about 100 miles to the west.

University of Puerto Rico--Rio Piedras workshop participants

“TeraGrid has been available to educators, students, and researchers in Puerto Rico for years,” said Lathrop. “At the workshops, we met many more who would like to use HPC resources in the classroom,” he added. There are now six Puerto Rican researchers with active TeraGrid allocations on resources at the National Center for Computational Sciences in Urbana, Illinois (NCSA); the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, Texas (TACC); the National Institute for Computational Science at Oak Ridge National Lab in Knoxville, Tennessee (NICS); Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC); and the National Center for Atmospheric Science in Boulder, Colorado (NCAR). “Our goal was to connect many more faculty and students with the free resources and services that are available through TeraGrid and other cyberinfrastructure providers,” Lathrop said.

Each workshop included an Introduction to Computational Thinking by Bob Panoff, of Shodor, Inc.; an overview of TeraGrid and step-by-step guide to requesting a TeraGrid start-up, education, and research allocation by Marcela Madrid (PSC); and hands-on instruction on the use of OpenMP and MPI to submit jobs via TeraGrid’s portal interface by Mahidar Tatineni, San Diego Supercomputer Center (SCSC). Two-week guest accounts on TeraGrid’s Steele and Pople supercomputers were issued, allowing time for post-workshop practice. Lathrop, TeraGrid’s Director of Advanced User Support, Amit Majumdar (SDSC),and Sergiu Sanielevici (PSC), TeraGrid’s director of user support, were on hand to provide one-on-one assistance.

TeraGrid researcher Stefano Leonardi with students.

One veteran Puerto Rico-based TeraGrid researcher is Stefano Leonardi, Assistant Professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Originally from Rome, Leonardi has worked at the Sapienza University in Rome, and the University of Newcastle in Australia. He also has experience with HPC resources at the University of San Diego and the United Kingdom’s University of Southampton. “My wife and I moved to Puerto Rico about two years ago because we feel it is as close to Paradise as one can get, unless your work depends on local HPC resources. If it weren’t for TeraGrid, there is no way I could continue my research,” he said.

Leonardi’s fluid dynamics research explores how surface roughness affects drag and transport phenomena on turbine blades in aeronautical engines. His current work is entitled, Direct Numerical Simulation of turbulent flow in urban canopies, and leverages allocations on a diverse selection of TACC TeraGrid systems, specifically Ranger, Lonestar, Spur, and Longhorn.

Leonardi submits jobs to TeraGrid that require huge calculations that generate vast amounts of data—about 10-15 terabytes. It would take too long to transfer a database that large from Puerto Rico. Therefore, using the visualization and data analysis resources of Longhorn, simulations of events are remotely produced and then associated data is stored locally in Austin, Texas on TACC’s Ranch. “With our in-house cluster, I often have to spend time changing broken disks or RAM. With TeraGrid, I can rely on specialists who keep their cluster running so I can focus on my research,” said Leonardi.

TeraGrid’s 2008 Science Highlights book featured a story about Leonardi’s research:https://www.teragrid.org/web/news/roughness

University of Puerto Rico--Mayaguez workshop participants

Benjamin Cruz Perez, a graduate student at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and one of Dr. Leonardi’s apprentices, is a big TeraGrid fan too. “I used TeraGrid resources to complete my master’s thesis. Without TeraGrid’s tools and training, I would not have been able to obtain results in time for my defense,” he said. Perez has been beneficiary to several NSF and TeraGrid programs, including a University of Texas course on Parallel Computing and a summer school in Italy that was co-sponsored by TeraGrid and its European counterpart, DEISA (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications). “Thanks to these experiences, I have met others with similar interests who also use supercomputing for their research. I’m now comfortable using the techniques I’ve learned for the efficient use of HPC, and look forward to participating in multidisciplinary collaborations in the future,” he added.

About one week after TeraGrid visited Puerto Rico, workshop participant Edusmildo Orozco, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, requested (and within two weeks was granted) an education allocation of 200,000 service units and 12 hours of advanced user support. “This free resource will be put to good use in my undergraduate Parallel Computation course,” said Orozco. “My students will have hands-on experience with one of TeraGrid’s largest systems. More importantly, I have access to 12 hours of advanced user support to help me get started. TeraGrid does a great job of bringing people and resources together. They also know what I need to help develop the next generation of HPC specialists,” he added.

There are many people who live and work in U.S. states and regions with limited access to local HPC resources. The NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR)http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=EPSC includes jurisdictions that receive less research funds from the NSF. The goal of the program is to build research and education capacity and increase the competitiveness of the EPSCoR jurisdictions. “We hope that researchers and educators from EPSCoR regions will leverage TeraGrid’s free resources to overcome the last-mile barriers to entry that we know exist,” said TeraGrid Forum Chair John Towns, National Center for Supercomputing Applications. “Our commitment to serving researchers, students, and educators like Leonardi, Perez, and Orozco, continues as we transition to the next generation of NSF-supported cyberinfrastructure in the coming months, known as eXtreme Digital, or XD,” he added.

For more information about TeraGrid visit www.teragrid.org.