The north campus of The University of Illinois in Urbana is home to one of the most powerful and long-running supercomputer facilities in the world. The recent Top 500 list has all five of their primary workhorses listed. Three of them were even in the top 100 with Abe debuting at #8. To walk by the facility you would have no idea what's going on inside. But it's the centers like this which shape much of science and industry. Many believe they even hold the keys to understanding the very nature of our universe.

 

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A look inside the NCSA (42 images) ...

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I had the unique opportunity to visit the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Urbana, Illinois, last week. I was greeted by public information specialist Trish Barker. Trish was joined by Joshi Fullop and John Stone. When we arrived at a second facility we were also joined by Senior Operations Program Manager Tom Roney.

Joshi is responsible for developing all of the monitoring software used at the facility. His software is also available open source. John is affiliated with the NCSA indirectly through his department's large supercomputing needs at the university. And Tom is responsible for the daily operations of physically running the supercomputing facility.

They all showed a great love and enthusiasm for what they do. That fact was even displayed by an almost competitive atmosphere as they all raced to see who could best answer any questions I asked. They'd even carry on conversations amongst themselves for a few seconds here and there. It was actually quite humorous at times to sit back and watch it all unfurl. The four of them brought many different viewpoints on the actual technology, its application and any real-world benefits we might see.

During the tour, there was so much information being tossed around that I could've literally spent days with them and not received it all. One thing was absolutely clear, however: the effort involved in making supercomputing available is no small feat. It requires knowledge and teamwork. Big teamwork. The people I came in contact with were impressive. They all seemed to be at the top of their game and it was quite a task for me just to keep up with everything (even though I was told they were greatly simplifying much of the technical details).

 

What is the NCSA?

The NCSA is the largest non-secure, or public, supercomputing facility in the United States. It was created in 1985 after an unsolicited request for funding was sent to the director of the National Science Foundation in 1983.

The early days of the NCSA were rather difficult. They were often pressed for funding because the idea of real-world benefits from such a new thing like a supercomputer weren't well understood. There was also an inertial mindset, one acting in direct opposition to the early team's efforts, against the need for the new fangled technology idea. However, it wasn't long after their first machine, a Cray X-MP/24 began churning away that all skeptics were proved wrong. I find it interesting to note that today's high-end desktops are about three times as powerful as the original Cray. They also have vastly more memory and storage capacity. We all have supercomputers today on our desktops, if only 20 years later.

ou may have come across the name NCSA before as this place is recognized as the origin of the web browser. It was here where Marc Andreesen, who later became the co-founder of Netscape, and Eric Bina invented the Mosaic browser in the early 1990s.


What services do they offer?

The NCSA is part of an open community, meaning if you or I had the need to do so, even we could use their facilities.

 

 

The NCSA is one of the four largest open facilities in the United States. There are also several smaller sites. The other three big players are The San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC), The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), and the newest one: The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

The NCSA's close ties to the academic community have provided many advances which are now industry standards. The teams working at NCSA right now are attempting to solve the future problems of newer machines housing more than 100,000 physical processors (400,000+ cores). The challenges facing this field of development are extreme. The team I toured with could not emphasize that reality enough.


What does the NCSA look like?

The NCSA campus is physically divided into two buildings. The first one I arrived at was completed in 2006 and now houses the bulk of the non-hardware support staff. Prior to this building being completed, there were as many as seven buildings scattered around campus with all of the NCSA staff. Today, there are more than 300 people working at the NCSA to make everything happen. These are people responsible for software setup, testing, proofing and analysis. There are also departments which work with the data after it's computed, like their Advanced Visualization department which has created some stunning work under the leadership of Donna Cox and her team. They create 3D models, animations and provide researches with a more tangible way to view their hard work.

Altogether the facilities in their new building allow NCSA customers to have the most interconnected and robust experience possible, no matter what their supercomputing needs are.

The other building was adopted and expanded from what used to be an astronomy center at the university in the 1970s. The original portion of the building comprises two upper levels and a type of basement-looking facility which is the first floor. The new add-on of 18,029 sq. feet was completed in 2001 and is comprised of one large floor and the same kind of basement.

The supercomputers at the NCSA are physically housed in this second building. It also contains an immense electrical station and four very large cooling systems consuming nearly all of the square footage available.

From the outside you would have no idea what takes place inside. Only a small sign out front gives any hint; it reads “Advanced Computation Building”. Still, in order to gain access to the building, you must pass through the outer layer of security. It has audio, video, a card scanner and a keypad. Once inside, you proceed up one floor via a plexi-glass top elevator. When you exit at the second floor you're standing at the back of the main control room. From there, the staff can monitor the supercomputer installation, down to every individual processor.

In truth, I must say there was a real sense of energy or electricity in the air in that room. When I first entered it expected there to be a humming, like we've all heard on the bridge of shows like Star Trek. Still, as I gazed toward the many screens and glanced at their important data I could not help but be struck by it all. The power... I mean, it's just right there before you on display.

The main control room looks like a small version of NASA's control room. It's manned around the clock, every day, all year, by three or four operators. This control room serves as a first-response “call center” for not only the customers using their facility, but also nine others. NCSA part of an organization called Teragrid, which is a distributed computing system across many different sites in the U.S. Teragrid communicates with all sites using a 30 Gbps backbone.

There are literally dozens of monitors displaying details of whatever is processing on the machines, which sit even deeper in the building. Joshi's open-source monitoring software populates many of those screens. Still, it's those machines further back in the building which really draw companies to the NCSA for their number crunching needs. Their power and performance is key. Let's see what it is all about.

Read on the next page: How much computing capacity does NCSA have and how much does a supercomputer cost?