RWT: What is the architecture of the Altix systems, and were any additional components used in the NASA installation?
Jason: The SGI Altix 3000 server uses a near-uniform memory access architecture first introduced by SGI in 1997 in the Origin 2000 server which utilized the 64-bit MIPS processor and SGI’s UNIX based IRIX operating system. SGI updated this architecture again in the year 2000 when we introduced the Origin 3000 servers which deploy a modular “brick” based architecture that allows users to add memory, processors, and additional system I/O independently, enabling flexibility to build systems that fit their applications needs exactly.
Recently in 2003 SGI introduced the SGI Altix 3000 which updated this well-proven architecture by offering the Intel Itanium 2 processor and scalable production ready Linux. Both the SGI Origin and SGI Altix systems are built around our memory channel interconnect called NUMAlink, which creates a flexible switch based fabric, which acts as the systems backplane, and is made up of routers and cables.
Each NUMAlink 3 connection has an aggregate bi-directional bandwidth of 3.2GB/second. This fabric of routers and cables allow SGI Altix 3000 hardware to be configured up to 512 processors and 8 Terabytes of cache-coherent memory today. This capability in part of the standard system design so no special hardware was required for the NASA system.
Because this is a major release, I am including most of the release text here - links are at the end.
December 16, 2003 -- Today's fourth release by the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) includes a wide range of software, services, documents and recommendations for the effective use of information technology in research and education. NMI-R4 emphasizes open-source solutions to issues critical to collaboration across multiple organizations that may be separated by geography and by divergent local computing architectures.
The release, available for free to the public at http://www.nsf-middleware.org, is designed to facilitate sharing of on-line resources. NMI-R4 includes a robust collection of tools and services for organizations to build their security and identity management infrastructure. New and updated components in NMI-R4 include several that emphasize Grid services, a new type of capability that uses open-source, open-architecture tools to build on popular Web service standards. Grid services make it much simpler for developers to create easy-to-use applications for accessing massive databases, computing power, networks and instrumentation across the Internet.
"NMI-R4 is a diverse set of software and related tools," said Kevin Thompson, NSF program director for NMI. "In addition to its being the first Grid services-compliant NMI release, it has new components that will help universities and other institutions collaborate via multimedia conferencing and enable appropriate access management using single sign-on web-enabled authentication, and authorization packages. Standards-based software and other tools distributed by NMI are having significant impact not only in research and education, but also in business sectors that are gravitating to the Grid and developing and deploying federation-based services."
NMI's move into Grid services is led by the Globus Toolkit 3.02, which is the de facto standard middleware that enables the Grid. Contributed through the NMI GRIDS Center by the international Globus Alliance, GT3 is the first full-scale implementation of the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) specification that was approved in 2003 by the Global Grid Forum, Grid computing's standards body. It includes all the functionality of earlier versions, with dramatically redesigned capabilities that use OGSI-based "service primitives" that -- rather than stipulating precise services -- instead establish a nucleus of behavior common to all Grid/Web services that can be leveraged by meta- and system-level services. GT3 uses this specification to provide powerful tools for resource monitoring, discovery, management, security and file transfer.
The release also features a rich variety of tools contributed by the NMI-EDIT Consortium of Internet2, EDUCAUSE and SURA. From deployment guides and testing packages for enterprise directories to an architecture for groups management, the portfolio reflects and accommodates the varying requirements across the R&E community.
Included in the EDIT release are A-Select and Cosign, two new web integrated sign-on packages. The Group Tools Architecture, an emerging structure for managing directory-enabled groups and authorization services, is also new. Lastly, the Video Middleware Cookbook offers guidance for the deployment and use of H.350, the ITU Directory Services Architecture for Multimedia Conferencing originally released as commObject in NMI-R1.
Other EDIT tools updated for NMI-R4 include the LDAP Analyzer, a service to test directory schema compliance; PERMIS, an authorization package; eduPerson, the de facto standard directory schema for higher-education; standalone KX.509 and KCA, the Kerberos to X.509 credential converter; and the Enterprise Directory Implementation Roadmap.
In addition to GT3, the GRIDS Center contributed several other new components. GridSolve, from the University of Tennessee, uses the remote procedure call (RPC) protocol to create a client/agent/server system for remote access to Grid-enabled hardware and software. PyGlobus, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, permits users to access the Globus Toolkit from Python, a high-level scripting language. UberFTP, from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), is an interactive client for GridFTP, which is part of the Globus Toolkit.
Two recently added NMI systems-integration projects -- the Open Grid Computing Environments Collaboratory (OGCE) and the Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) team -- will contribute to NMI releases starting with NMI-R5 in spring 2004. OGCE and CIMA take advantage of the latest Grid-service specifications to, respectively, facilitate the creation of Grid portals and ease the use of Grid-enabled instrumentation. OGCE's portals are Web-based user interfaces that simplify the process of identifying and accessing Grid resources. CIMA seeks to develop a standard, reusable Grid methodology for access to devices such as synchrotrons, embedded network monitors and wireless sensors.
NMI began with awards in September 2001 to GRIDS and EDIT, along with a number of smaller exploratory awards. With the continued funding of its original teams and the addition of OGCE, CIMA and new experimental projects, NMI is at the vanguard of an emerging "cyberinfrastructure" that NSF is designing to facilitate 21st Century collaboration in science and engineering.
For more information:
- NMI Fact Sheet: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/fs03_nmi.htm
- GRIDS Center: http://www.grids-center.org
- NMI-EDIT Consortium: http://www.nmi-edit.org
- OGCE Team: http://www.ogce.org
Read about The Inquirer story, and the original post at OpenVMS.org.
HP OpenVMS Alpha Version 7.3-2 New Features & Benefits
OpenVMS Alpha Version 7.3-2 will focus on continued enhancements in SMP and I/O performance, availability, UNIX? portability, and e-Business, as well as other new capabilities. This release will also consolidate OpenVMS hardware update kits for EV7 platforms support and features.The field test version of OpenVMS Version 7.3-2 is scheduled to be available in June 2003, with the final version available in Q4 2003.
This document describes much of the functionality included in OpenVMS Alpha Version 7.3-2 and its associated products.
Check out The Inquirer's story and see HPC's OpenVMS 7.3-2 announcement.
The porting of Open Office to OpenVMS is under way. See VMS OpenOffice for details. Also included in the update is Unix Portability announcement.