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Sgambati, Matthew R

Publications and source records attributed to Sgambati, Matthew R.

Microgrid Integration with High Performance Computing Systems for Microreactor Operation

Multiple nuclear microreactor concepts are currently being developed across several sizes and fuel types with high performance computing (HPC) systems anticipated to be end-users of the power. Nuclear microreactors are small in size, portable, produce less than 10 MW electric, operate autonomously, and have a refueling interval of as many as 10 years. However, their load-follow is also generally limited to 10%/minute or worse whereas the power variance in HPC systems easily exceeds this constraint under normal operations. This study explores an approach that requires no load-follow from the microreactor but integrates the HPC system with a microgrid built from commercial-off-the-shelf components. Three typical HPC architectures are explored in the context of microgrid operation in this study. Components of power quality and transient response are empirically measured for five different HPC load-follow response levels using a self-contained mobile datacenter connected to the microgrid capable of integration with a nuclear microreactor.

microgrids↗

High Performance Computing Peak Shaving for Microreactor Operation

There are multiple nuclear microreactors currently under development that are designed to provide autonomous power for as many as ten or more years without refueling and are designed to power high performance computing (HPC) datacenters. But the load-follow speeds for a nuclear microreactor will be much slower than grid power and slower than the power variance typical of a HPC system. HPC datacenters experience peak power load variance driven by several factors ranging from the operation of cooling systems to remove heat from the servers to supporting a wide range of user application workflows and architectures each with different power signatures. One mechanism to support the limited load-follow of a microreactor is peak shaving where an energy storage mechanism is used to shed peak load and reduce significant power variance. This work explores peak electrical load shaving using uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems designed for HPC support in the context of peak shaving when operating using a nuclear microreactor with a load-follow limited to 10% of load per minute. Using a self contained HPC datacenter complete with stand-alone cooling system and provisioned with an x86 cluster, an ARM cluster, and a graphics processing unit (GPU) cluster, peak shaving for microreactor operation using the UPS battery backup is explored while running two classes of typical HPC user applications. HPC architecture suitability for microreactor operation under this type of peak shaving is examined.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Software Quality Assurance for High Performance Computing Containers

Software containers are a key channel for delivering portable and reproducible scientific software in high performance computing (HPC) environments. HPC environments are different from other types of computing environments primarily due to usage of the message passing interface (MPI) and drivers for specialized hard- ware to enable distributed computing capabilities. This distinction directly impacts how software containers are built for HPC applications and can complicate software quality assurance efforts including portability and performance. This work introduces a strategy for building containers for HPC applications that adopts layering as a mechanism for software quality assurance. The strategy is demonstrated across three different HPC systems, two of them petaflops scale with entirely different interconnect technologies and/or processor chipsets but running the same container. Performance consequences of the containerization strategy are found to be less than 5-14% while still achieving portable and reproducible containers for HPC systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Machine Learning Models for Network Traffic Classification in Programmable Logic

Network traffic classification via machine learning on network packet payloads has emerged as an active area of research for network security due to the high accuracy machine learning models have achieved in classifying payloads. For effective deployment as part of network security, these machine learning models must not only classify malicious packet payloads accurately, they must also identify anomalous payloads and perform inference at speeds generally faster than 10,000 packets per second to be effective. This work explores the in- ference speeds and accuracy of several neural network models implemented in programmable logic on various field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) including the Xilinx VC1902 and Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+. This work also presents the design and performance of both an autoencoder and variational autoencoder programmed on the FPGA for identifying anomalous packet payloads. The performance benefits of the FPGA implementation for this type of packet payload inspection driven by machine learning are compared against graphics processing unit (GPU) inference implementations run on two state-of-the-art datacenter GPU devices, the NVIDIA V100 and A100. The model accuracy difference between the FPGA and GPU implementations was found to be 4% or less while the Xilinx VC1902 outperformed both the NVIDIA V100 and A100 for inference speeds on all the models explored except the variational autoencoder.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Machine Learning 5G Attack Detection in Programmable Logic

Machine learning-assisted network security may significantly contribute to securing 5G components. However, machine learning network security inference speeds generally require tens to hundreds of milliseconds thereby introducing significant latency in 5G operations. The inference latency can be reduced by deploying the machine learning model to programmable logic in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) at the cost of a small loss in accuracy. In order to quantify this loss, as well as to establish baseline performance inference speeds for programmable logic implementations, this work explores an autoencoder and a ß-variational autoencoder deployed on two different FPGA evaluation boards and compares accuracy and performance against an NVIDIA A100 GPU implementation. A publicly available 5G dataset containing 10 types of attacks along with normal traffic is introduced as part of the evaluation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantifying the Impact of Advanced Web Platforms on High Performance Computing Usage

The deployment of Science Gateways for High Performance Computing (HPC) systems can alter long-accepted usage patterns on supercomputing systems in positive ways as an ever-increasing number of users migrate their workflows to HPC systems. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has deployed two separate advanced web platforms, Open OnDemand and NICE DCV, for integration with HPC resources to improve web accessibility for HPC users. Researchers conducted a multi-year study on how HPC usage pat- terns changed in the presence of these platforms. This work reports the results of that study and quantifies the observed impacts, including adoption by visualization and Jupyter Notebook/Lab users, decreased job submission friction, rapid uptake of HPC by Windows users, and increased overall system utilization. The most significant impacts were observed from the deployment of Open OnDemand, and this work also identifies some best practices for Open OnDemand deployment for HPC datacenters.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Development of a High Performance Computing Accounts Administration Web Application

INL's High Performance Computing (HPC) accounts administration tool is a web application that that allows an administrator to change user information, create an HPC account, create or modify an LDAP group or project, and modify the members in a group. An administrator can search for a user, obtain the relevant information about the user, and update their account information. To create or modify an LDAP group or project, the administrator can filter a list of groups or projects according to the name, owner, or administrator that created the project or group, choose a name accordingly, and specify the group or project owner.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

High Performance Computing Systems Tools, Visualization, and Management

High Performance Computing (HPC) systems are complex setups of servers, storage devices, network switches, and cables that are specifically designed to accommodate hundreds of users running highly computationally intensive applications at a time. These applications require numerous softwares, licenses, and various levels of storage as well. All of these resources must be monitored and managed by HPC administrators, which presents a daunting task. In this project, I created numerous software tools as part of an HPC Visualization and Management system, which is now used by HPC administrators on a daily basis.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗