Search NASASearch

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “cluster computing”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 55 records · Page 3

Computational Approaches to Simulation and Optimization of Global Aircraft Trajectories

This study examines three possible approaches to improving the speed in generating wind-optimal routes for air traffic at the national or global level. They are: (a) using the resources of a supercomputer, (b) running the computations on multiple commercially available computers and (c) implementing those same algorithms into NASAs Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) and compares those to a standard implementation run on a single CPU. Wind-optimal aircraft trajectories are computed using global air traffic schedules. The run time and wait time on the supercomputer for trajectory optimization using various numbers of CPUs ranging from 80 to 10,240 units are compared with the total computational time for running the same computation on a single desktop computer and on multiple commercially available computers for potential computational enhancement through parallel processing on the computer clusters. This study also re-implements the trajectory optimization algorithm for further reduction of computational time through algorithm modifications and integrates that with FACET to facilitate the use of the new features which calculate time-optimal routes between worldwide airport pairs in a wind field for use with existing FACET applications. The implementations of trajectory optimization algorithms use MATLAB, Python, and Java programming languages. The performance evaluations are done by comparing their computational efficiencies and based on the potential application of optimized trajectories. The paper shows that in the absence of special privileges on a supercomputer, a cluster of commercially available computers provides a feasible approach for national and global air traffic system studies.

global air traffic optimization

Introducing the SLICE Method for estimating pebble-bed reactor inventories at equilibrium operation with SCALE

This paper introduces the SCALE Leap-In method for Cores at Equilibrium (SLICE) for estimating pebble-bed reactor equilibrium core isotopic inventories using capabilities in the SCALE code system, requiring only a small computational cluster and a few days of computation. This method uses an iterative approach that relies on (1) a surrogate spectrum model that captures spatial and time-dependent spectral conditions, (2) a multi-pass model that captures the pebble’s evolving nuclide inventory as a function of location and time in the core, and (3) a full-core model that captures the core’s spatial neutron flux distribution. The SLICE approach is applied to a generic fluoride salt–cooled high-temperature reactor, demonstrating fuel inventory convergence through nuclide concentration inspection across iterations and comparisons for core realizations with varying discretizations. Results agree within ~5% with another state-of-the-art code, with differences attributed to input parameter or modeling assumption variations in the equilibrium generation methods.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS

Towards an Autonomic Cluster Management System (ACMS) with Reflex Autonomicity

Cluster computing, whereby a large number of simple processors or nodes are combined together to apparently function as a single powerful computer, has emerged as a research area in its own right. The approach offers a relatively inexpensive means of providing a fault-tolerant environment and achieving significant computational capabilities for high-performance computing applications. However, the task of manually managing and configuring a cluster quickly becomes daunting as the cluster grows in size. Autonomic computing, with its vision to provide self-management, can potentially solve many of the problems inherent in cluster management. We describe the development of a prototype Autonomic Cluster Management System (ACMS) that exploits autonomic properties in automating cluster management and its evolution to include reflex reactions via pulse monitoring.

Truszkowski, Walt

High Performance, Dependable Multiprocessor

With the ever increasing demand for higher bandwidth and processing capacity of today's space exploration, space science, and defense missions, the ability to efficiently apply commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) processors for on-board computing is now a critical need. In response to this need, NASA's New Millennium Program office has commissioned the development of Dependable Multiprocessor (DM) technology for use in payload and robotic missions. The Dependable Multiprocessor technology is a COTS-based, power efficient, high performance, highly dependable, fault tolerant cluster computer. To date, Honeywell has successfully demonstrated a TRL4 prototype of the Dependable Multiprocessor [I], and is now working on the development of a TRLS prototype. For the present effort Honeywell has teamed up with the University of Florida's High-performance Computing and Simulation (HCS) Lab, and together the team has demonstrated major elements of the Dependable Multiprocessor TRLS system.

fault tolerant

[Earth and Space Sciences Project Services for NASA HPCC]

This grant supported the effort to characterize the problem domain of the Earth Science Technology Office's Computational Technologies Project, to engage the Beowulf Cluster Computing Community as well as the High Performance Computing Research Community so that we can predict the applicability of said technologies to the scientific community represented by the CT project and formulate long term strategies to provide the computational resources necessary to attain the anticipated scientific objectives of the CT project. Specifically, the goal of the evaluation effort is to use the information gathered over the course of the Round-3 investigations to quantify the trends in scientific expectations, the algorithmic requirements and capabilities of high-performance computers to satisfy this anticipated need.

Merkey, Phillip

[Earth Science Technology Office's Computational Technologies Project]

This grant supported the effort to characterize the problem domain of the Earth Science Technology Office's Computational Technologies Project, to engage the Beowulf Cluster Computing Community as well as the High Performance Computing Research Community so that we can predict the applicability of said technologies to the scientific community represented by the CT project and formulate long term strategies to provide the computational resources necessary to attain the anticipated scientific objectives of the CT project. Specifically, the goal of the evaluation effort is to use the information gathered over the course of the Round-3 investigations to quantify the trends in scientific expectations, the algorithmic requirements and capabilities of high-performance computers to satisfy this anticipated need.

Fischer, James

Computational Approaches to Simulation and Optimization of Global Aircraft Trajectories

This study examines three possible approaches to improving the speed in generating wind-optimal routes for air traffic at the national or global level. They are: (a) using the resources of a supercomputer, (b) running the computations on multiple commercially available computers and (c) implementing those same algorithms into NASA’s Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) and compares those to a standard implementation run on a single CPU. Wind-optimal aircraft trajectories are computed using global air traffic schedules. The run time and wait time on the supercomputer for trajectory optimization using various numbers of CPUs ranging from 80 to 10,240 units are compared with the total computational time for running the same computation on a single desktop computer and on multiple commercially available computers for potential computational enhancement through parallel processing on the computer clusters. This study also re-implements the trajectory optimization algorithm for further reduction of computational time through algorithm modifications and integrates that with FACET to facilitate the use of the new features which calculate time-optimal routes between worldwide airport pairs in a wind field for use with existing FACET applications. The implementations of trajectory optimization algorithms use MATLAB, Python, and Java programming languages. The performance evaluations are done by comparing their computational efficiencies and based on the potential application of optimized trajectories. The paper shows that in the absence of special privileges on a supercomputer, a cluster of commercially available computers provides a good option for computing wind-optimal trajectories for national and global air traffic system studies.

Ng, Hok K.

A Study of Parallel Scalability and Dynamic Workload Balancing in GlennICE

The Glenn Icing Computational Environment (GlennICE) is a computational tool designed to calculate ice growth on complex three-dimensional geometries. It utilizes user-supplied computational fluid dynamics solutions for the geometry of interest. Key developments include advancements in convergence of collection efficiency, trajectory optimization, and refinement methodology. These improvements have significantly enhanced GlennICE’s efficiency for practical engineering applications. A recent study focused on benchmarking GlennICE’s scalability in a parallel environment using static scheduling. Findings indicated a potential twofold increase in efficiency through workload balance enhancements. This paper presents an analysis of the solver’s new workload balancing improvements, incorporating shared memory and dynamic scheduling routines. Results demonstrate a highly efficient and consistent algorithm across high-performance computing clusters.

Computational Icing

Architecture-Adaptive Computing Environment: A Tool for Teaching Parallel Programming

Recently, networked and cluster computation have become very popular. This paper is an introduction to a new C based parallel language for architecture-adaptive programming, aCe C. The primary purpose of aCe (Architecture-adaptive Computing Environment) is to encourage programmers to implement applications on parallel architectures by providing them the assurance that future architectures will be able to run their applications with a minimum of modification. A secondary purpose is to encourage computer architects to develop new types of architectures by providing an easily implemented software development environment and a library of test applications. This new language should be an ideal tool to teach parallel programming. In this paper, we will focus on some fundamental features of aCe C.

Dorband, John E.

Reconstruction of Thermal Protection System Aeroheating using a Green’s Function Approach

Inverse heat transfer (IHT) techniques are often used to reconstruct the surface heating conditions on spacecraft thermal protection systems (TPS) during atmospheric entry. Current IHT techniques for entry spacecraft applications, however, demand substantial computational resources, and are impractical for analyses such as uncertainty quantification and real-time health monitoring. In this paper, a Green’s function sensor fusion approach is used to reconstruct the TPS surface aeroheating conditions on experimental spaceflight and ground test systems from collocated temperature and heat flux sensors embedded in the TPS. The algorithm leverages Green’s functions to model the heat conduction within the spacecraft TPS and stabilizes the recovery of the surface heating condition using the direct heat flux sensor measurement. The algorithm is validated using arc-jet ground test data and applied to the reconstruction of the Mars 2020 backshell heating during Martian atmospheric entry. The performance of the algorithm is benchmarked against a current state-of-the-art IHT framework, FIAT_Opt. The Green’s function-based reconstruction algorithm recovers the net hot-wall heat flux absorbed by the TPS and the incident heat flux from the atmospheric entry environment in close agreement with FIAT_Opt. Notably, computation of the surface heating condition is completed in three orders of magnitude less time with the Green’s function sensor fusion approach using a consumer-grade PC, versus with FIAT_Opt running on a high performance computer cluster. The efficiency of the algorithm is leveraged to compute the uncertainty contributions of input parameters to the total uncertainty in reconstructed Mars 2020 backshell heating for the full atmospheric entry heat pulse. The sensitivity analysis uncovers that, at different times throughout the entry heat pulse, uncertainties in the TPS specific heat, thermal conductivity, and emissivity are all dominant drivers of the reconstruction uncertainty. These results demonstrate Green’s functions and sensor-fusion techniques as promising IHT approaches to reconstruct atmospheric entry environments from TPS-embedded measurements, and highlight how these techniques may give access to post-flight analyses previously hindered by the prohibitive cost of current methods.

Kenneth McAfee

Reconstruction of Thermal Protection System Aeroheating using a Green’s Function Approach

Inverse heat transfer (IHT) techniques are often used to reconstruct the surface heating conditions on spacecraft thermal protection systems (TPS) during atmospheric entry. Current IHT techniques for entry spacecraft applications, however, demand substantial computational resources, and are impractical for analyses such as uncertainty quantification and real-time health monitoring. In this paper, a Green’s function sensor fusion approach is used to reconstruct the TPS surface aeroheating conditions on experimental spaceflight and ground test systems from collocated temperature and heat flux sensors embedded in the TPS. The algorithm leverages Green’s functions to model the heat conduction within the spacecraft TPS and stabilizes the recovery of the surface heating condition using the direct heat flux sensor measurement. The algorithm is validated using arc-jet ground test data and applied to the reconstruction of the Mars 2020 backshell heating during Martian atmospheric entry. The performance of the algorithm is benchmarked against a current state-of-the-art IHT framework, FIAT_Opt. The Green’s function-based reconstruction algorithm recovers the net hot-wall heat flux absorbed by the TPS and the incident heat flux from the atmospheric entry environment in close agreement with FIAT_Opt. Notably, computation of the surface heating condition is completed in three orders of magnitude less time with the Green’s function sensor fusion approach using a consumer-grade PC, versus with FIAT_Opt running on a high performance computer cluster. The efficiency of the algorithm is leveraged to compute the uncertainty contributions of input parameters to the total uncertainty in reconstructed Mars 2020 backshell heating for the full atmospheric entry heat pulse. The sensitivity analysis uncovers that, at different times throughout the entry heat pulse, uncertainties in the TPS specific heat, thermal conductivity, and emissivity are all dominant drivers of the reconstruction uncertainty. These results demonstrate Green’s functions and sensor-fusion techniques as promising IHT approaches to reconstruct atmospheric entry environments from TPS-embedded measurements, and highlight how these techniques may give access to post-flight analyses previously hindered by the prohibitive cost of current methods.

Kenneth McAfee

Autonomic Cluster Management System (ACMS): A Demonstration of Autonomic Principles at Work

Cluster computing, whereby a large number of simple processors or nodes are combined together to apparently function as a single powerful computer, has emerged as a research area in its own right. The approach offers a relatively inexpensive means of achieving significant computational capabilities for high-performance computing applications, while simultaneously affording the ability to. increase that capability simply by adding more (inexpensive) processors. However, the task of manually managing and con.guring a cluster quickly becomes impossible as the cluster grows in size. Autonomic computing is a relatively new approach to managing complex systems that can potentially solve many of the problems inherent in cluster management. We describe the development of a prototype Automatic Cluster Management System (ACMS) that exploits autonomic properties in automating cluster management.

Baldassari, James D.

Containers on Switches: A Cluster School Experience

Network switches, such as those from Arista and Mellanox, often have underutilized computational resources in the form of built-in processors and memory. By leveraging these untapped resources, we can optimize functionality and efficiency of computational cluster networks. Our research focuses on deploying containers directly onto these switches to execute various auxiliary tasks ranging from metric logging to system-wide management via post-boot configuration. By doing so, we can significantly enchance the capabilities of the cluster without the need for additional dedicated hardware. Our research involved five distinct scenarios where switch utilization could have a profound impact on HPC Clusters: run cloud-init services via link-local connection; configuring a Telegraf container to export metrics; deploying a caching proxy; creating a reconfigurable IPv6 DHCP/DNS provider for VLAN; and implementing a client detection with Magellan discovery. These scenarios were containerized with podman and docker, and tested both physically on the switch virtually on a QEMU VM both running SONiC OS. Testing and findings indicate that network switches can indeed be used for these scenarios. They offer a wide range of possibilities beyond these applications. They run as expected as containers on the switches, and although there were some minor issues, work-arounds were implemented. Overall, this is a positive result that can be further explored with more scenarios.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

A Study of Parallel Scalability and Dynamic Workload Balancing in GlennICE

The Glenn Icing Computational Environment (GlennICE) is a computational tool designed to calculate ice growth on complex three-dimensional geometries. It utilizes user-supplied computational fluid dynamics solutions for the geometry of interest. Key developments include advancements in convergence of collection efficiency, trajectory optimization, and refinement methodology. These improvements have significantly enhanced GlennICE’s efficiency for practical engineering applications. A recent study focused on benchmarking GlennICE’s scalability in a parallel environment using static scheduling. Findings indicated a potential twofold increase in efficiency through workload balance enhancements. This paper presents an analysis of the solver’s new workload balancing improvements, incorporating shared memory and dynamic scheduling routines. Results demonstrate a highly efficient and consistent algorithm across high-performance computing clusters.

Computational Icing

WDM Component Requirements for Bit-Parallel Fiber Optic Computer Networks

The device specifications for an all optical bit-parallel WDM single fiber link for the cluster computer network community are intended for dissemination to the opto-electronic device research community to stimulate synergy between the two, ultimately leading to early availability of new devices to the computer network researchers.

wavelength

Predicting runtime and resource utilization of jobs on integrated cloud and HPC systems

Recent advances in virtualization technologies used in cloud computing offer performance that closely approaches bare-metal levels. Combined with specialized instance types and high-speed networking services for cluster computing, cloud platforms have become a compelling option for high-performance computing (HPC). However, most current batch job schedulers in HPC systems are designed for homogeneous clusters and make decisions based on limited information about jobs and system status. Scientists typically submit computational jobs to these schedulers with a requested runtime that is often over- or under-estimated. More accurate runtime predictions can help schedulers make better decisions and reduce job turnaround times. Here, they can also support decisions about migrating jobs to the cloud to avoid long queue wait times in HPC systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING

Fault Injection Campaign for a Fault Tolerant Duplex Framework

Fault tolerance is an efficient approach adopted to avoid or reduce the damage of a system failure. In this work we present the results of a fault injection campaign we conducted on the Duplex Framework (DF). The DF is a software developed by the UCLA group [1, 2] that uses a fault tolerant approach and allows to run two replicas of the same process on two different nodes of a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computer cluster. A third process running on a different node, constantly monitors the results computed by the two replicas, and eventually restarts the two replica processes if an inconsistency in their computation is detected. This approach is very cost efficient and can be adopted to control processes on spacecrafts where the fault rate produced by cosmic rays is not very high.

fault injector

A Versatile Simulated Data Transport Layer for in Situ Workflows Performance Evaluation

In situ processing does not only allow scientific applications to face the explosion in data volume and velocity but also to address the time constraints of many simulation-analysis workflows by providing scientists with early insights about their applications at runtime. Multiple frameworks implement the concept of a data transport layer (DTL) to enable such in situ workflows. These tools are very versatile, directly or indirectly access the data generated on the same node, another node of the same compute cluster, or a completely distinct node, and allow data publishers and subscribers to run on the same computing resources or not. This versatility puts on researchers the onus of taking key decisions related to resource allocation and how to transport data to ensure the most efficient execution of their in situ workflows. However, domain scientists and workflow practitioners lack the appropriate tools to assess the respective performance of particular design and deployment options. In this paper we introduce a versatile simulated DTL designed to provide researchers with insights on the respective performance of different execution scenarios of in situ workflows. This open-source, standalone library builds on the SimGrid toolkit and can be linked to any SimGrid-based simulator. It facilitates the evaluation of the performance behavior, at scale, of different data transport configurations and the study of the effects of resource allocation strategies. We demonstrate the scalability, versatility, and accuracy of this simulated DTL by reproducing the execution of two synthetic benchmarks and of a real-world in situ workflow composed of an MPI application and a parallel data analysis. Results of simulations run on a single core show that the proposed library can simulate the interactions of tens of thousands of simulated processes deployed on two interconnected commodity clusters in a few seconds, and the execution by a thousand simulated processes of an in situ workflow in less than three minutes.

Suter, Fred [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000319021955)