The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is one of the leading such facilities in the nation. One
of the four original sites in the Teragrid project, it is internationally recognized for its
contribution to computational biosciences and computational approaches to earth sciences and
genomics. SDSC is especially known for its role in creating and maintaining the creation and
maintenance of the Protein Ddata Bank, the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering
Simulation Cyberinfrastructure Center (NEESit), cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences (GEON), and
the Tree of Life Project (TOL). But for all the tremendous computing power it contributes to can
bring to bear on projects ranging from protein simulations to earthquake analyses, it is the
teamwork and user interface that has made SDSC stand out recently.
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In September, SDSC released version 1.0 of a new user portal, featuring an innovative
user-settable reservation system that gives researchers more control over when their jobs will run
on the center's supercomputers. The service, not previously offered in high performance computing
centers, is debuting on SDSC's DataStar and TeraGrid Cluster systems.
"We've had a lot of feedback in user surveys asking for faster turnaround time," said SDSC Director
and CCST Council Member Fran Berman. "While we couldn't eliminate the queue entirely, we realized
that a service that lets users themselves schedule 'windows' of reserved time would let them
complete jobs more reliably and get more done."
Queuing up for time on supercomputers is an all too common pastime for computational scientists, who
may end up waiting anywhere from hours to days for their turn to use the machines. The unpredictably
of queues can impede the course of research, slowing progress with unexpected periods of waiting.
The user portal offers researchers the opportunity to schedule jobs ahead of time through a web
interface, accomplishing tasks such as running jobs and moving data that would ordinarily require
complex command-line scripts. This is particularly useful for many researchers who find their
sessions unexpectedly interrupted by glitches or minor problems with the software, forcing them to
stop and fix the problem, waiting in the queue once again to restart. It is also useful for those
who may need to be sure they run in conjunction with a scheduled event such as observing time on an
electron microscope or other instrument.
"Any system, no matter how sophisticated, is limited by its usability," said Berman. "We hope that
the new user interface will help SDSC serve the scientific community even more efficiently."
