SCIENCE

New resources will be available this cycle. The new Lonestar at TACC will be placed into production February 1, 2011. This 302 teraflops system, coupled with a 1 petabyte Luster file system,will be allocated separate from the Abe/QueenBee/Steele/Lonestar Dell PowerEdge Cluster pool. The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) will soon offer a 324-node/100 Teraflops system with 38 terabytes of flash memory, called Trestles. The system will work with, and span the deployments of, SDSC’s recently introduced Dash system and its larger Gordon data-intensive system, which will be operational in mid-2011. The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) will introduce Blacklight, an Altix UV system, featuring 512 Nehalem 2.226 gigahertz 8-core processors—4,096 cores total.

For the most current information about TeraGrid resources, visit the resource catalog: www.teragrid.org/web/user-support/resources. Tips for writing a successful resource request are included at https://www.teragrid.org/web/user-support/rac_request_guide.

TeraGrid and Indiana University Introduce FutureGrid, an Experimental Cloud Test Bed 

FutureGrid, an experimental grid test bed, is available (for early adopter use) to researchers who are developing new grid and cloud application frameworks. FutureGrid is a proving ground on which to test applications in a variety of different environments (e.g. CTSS vs. clouds). Access and accounts are managed by Indiana University via an online process. For more information, please visit:http://futuregrid.org/ or contact help@futuregrid.org.

TeraGrid’s Transition to XD—The Future is Now!

The NSF has already begun to introduce elements of the next phase of their investment in high-end computing: the eXtreme Digital, or XD, program, which will supplant the TeraGrid program. In 2010, new services were announced, including the Technology Audit Services (TAS) and Technology Insertion Services (TIS). TAS, managed by the Center for Computational Research at theUniversity at Buffalo, State Universities of New York (SUNY), will have systemic tools in place to benchmark user satisfaction and resource utilization across the board. TIS, awarded to NCSA, PSC, NICS, and TACC, will feature a means by which to identify the most promising technologies to meet evolving demands. These services will allow us to be better stewards of XD resources and optimize their use by an increasing number of users and new fields of research. A competition for the management of XD is under review by NSF and is expected to be announced in late spring of 2011.  For more information about XD, visit the NSF/OCI web site: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503282.

For the most up-to-date information, including an XD transition schedule and answers to frequently asked questions, visit: http://www.teragrid.org/XDTransition. Contact TeraGrid with specific questions by email: XDQuestions@teragrid.org, via the TeraGrid User Portal web form (select the consulting tab), or by calling 1-866-907-2383.