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Sultana, Nik

Publications and source records attributed to Sultana, Nik.

Shape-shifting Elephants: Multi-modal Transport for Integrated Research Infrastructure

Data Acquisition (DAQ) workloads form an important class of scientific network traffic that by its nature (1) flows across different research infrastructure, including remote instruments and supercomputer clusters, (2) has ever-increasing throughput demands, and (3) has ever-increasing integration demands---for example, observations at one instrument could trigger a reconfiguration of another instrument. Today's DAQ transfers rely on UDP and (heavily tuned) TCP, but this is driven by convenience rather than suitability. The mismatch between Internet transport protocols and scientific workloads becomes more stark with the steady increase in link capacities, data generation, and integration across research infrastructure.This position paper argues the importance of developing specialized transport protocols for DAQ workloads. It proposes a new transport feature for this kind of elephant flow: multi-modality involves the network actively configuring the transport protocol to change how DAQ flows are processed across different underlying networks that connect scientific research infrastructure. Multi-modality is a layering violation that is proposed as a pragmatic technique for DAQ transport protocol design. It takes advantage of programmable network hardware that is increasingly being deployed in scientific research infrastructure. The paper presents an initial evaluation through a pilot study that includes a Tofino2 switch and Alveo FPGA cards, and using data from a particle detector.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

High-Throughput Custom Monitoring for the Mu2e TDAQ System

In this project we are studying the application of programmable network hardware to provide a custom monitoring capability for the Mu2e Trigger and Data Acquisition System (TDAQ) system. The goal of the Mu2e experiment is to search for a charged-lepton flavor violating processes where a negative muon converts into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus. This experiment is intended to improve by four orders of magnitude the search sensitivity reached so far. We have a working prototype of a system that provides high-throughput, custom monitoring for the Mu2e TDAQ system. The custom Mu2e network packet header format is parsed as it crosses the network switch. Parsing extracts bits that convey information about error states at read-out controllers (ROCs). This information is periodically relayed to the switch controller, which in turn alerts experiment operators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

High-Throughput Custom Monitoring for the Mu2e TDAQ System

In this project we are studying the application of programmable network hardware to provide a custom monitoring capability for the Mu2e Trigger and Data Acquisition System (TDAQ) system. The goal of the Mu2e experiment is to search for a charged-lepton flavor violating processes where a negative muon converts into an electron in the field of an aluminum nucleus. This experiment is intended to improve by four orders of magnitude the search sensitivity reached so far. We have a working prototype of a system that provides high-throughput, custom monitoring for the Mu2e TDAQ system. The custom Mu2e network packet header format is parsed as it crosses the network switch. Parsing extracts bits that convey information about error states at read-out controllers (ROCs). This information is periodically relayed to the switch controller, which in turn alerts experiment operators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

In-Network DAQ Functions

A revolution in networking is changing how we compute, but we lack the tools that can channel this new capability to benefit science. It is now possible to write programs that operate "in" the network—on network cards (NICs) and network switches themselves, rather than on servers. These programs can analyze and reduce huge volumes of data as they flow through the network—at higher throughput, lower latency, and lower power consumption than if servers (containing CPUs or GPUs) were used. That equipment offers appealing features for scientific experiments that involve huge quantities of data. This poster describes a prototype LArTPC raw-waveform hit finder based on DUNE’s Trigger Primitives generator. We built this as part of ongoing research to better understand how to put programmable network hardware to use in large scientific experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗