SLinCA@Home
Encyclopedia
SLinCA@Home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to do research in fields of physics and materials science.
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), in Kiev
, the capital of Ukraine
. It runs on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
software platform, SZTAKI Desktop Grid
platform, and Distributed Computing API (DC-API) by SZTAKI
. SLinCA@Home hosts several scientific applications dedicated to search of scale-invariant
dependencies in experimental data and results of computer simulations.
for the funding of research and technological development in Europe. During 2009-2010 it used the power of local IMP
Desktop Grid (DG), but from December 2010 it uses the power of volunteer-driven distributed computing
in solving the computationally intensive problems related with a search of scale-invariant
dependencies in experimentally obtained and simulated scientific data. Now it is operated by group of scientists from IMP
NASU in the tight cooperation with partners from IDGF and Distributed Computing team 'Ukraine'. From June 2010 SLinCA@Home works under framework of DEGISCO FP7 EU
project.
By informal statistics at BOINCstats site (as of 16 March 2011) over 2,000 volunteers in 39 countries have participated in the project, making it the second most popular BOINC project in Ukraine
(after Magnetism@Home project, which is not active now). About 700 active users contribute about 0.5-1.5 teraFLOPS
of computational power, which would rank SLinCA@Home among the top 20 on the TOP500
list of supercomputer
s ... as of June, 2005. :)
Currently, one application (SLinCA) is running at global public IMP
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure (SLinCA@Home), and three others
(MultiScaleIVideoP,
CPDynSG,
LAMMPS over DCI)
are under tests now at local private IMP
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure.
dependencies using data from the public data of experiments and simulations in the following scientific applications.
of the NASU. Its aim is to find scale invariant laws in kinetic scenarios of monomer aggregation in clusters of different kinds in different scientific domains.
The processes of agent aggregation in clusters are investigated in many branches of science: defect aggregation in materials science, population dynamics in biology, city growth and evolution in sociology, etc. There are experimental data confirming their evolving structure, which is hierarchical on many scales. The available theories give many scenarios of cluster aggregation, formation of hierarchical structures, and their scaling properties. But it takes the powerful computational resources for hierarchical processing of the huge databases of experimental data. The typical simulation of one cluster aggregation process with 106 monomers takes approximately 1–7 days on a single modern CPU
, depending on the number of Monte Carlo
steps (MCS).
Deploying SLinCA on a Grid computing
infrastructure, utilising hundreds of machines at the same time, allows harnessing sufficient computational power to undertake the simulations on a larger scale and in a much shorter timeframe. Running the simulations and analysing the results on the Grid provides the required excessive computational power.
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of SLinCA application at global public IMP
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure (SLinCA@Home):
computing resources at CETA-CIEMAT and at XtremWeb-HEP LAL test infrastructures were obtained and reported in 2009 during the poster session at 4th EDGeS training event and 3rd AlmereGrid Workshop, Almere
, Netherlands
(29–30 March 2009).
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 50 to 200% faster).
(ROI), and in static regime. But many crucial processes of damage initiation and propagation take place dynamically in the wide observable time domain from 10−3 s to 103 s and on the many scales from 10−6 m (solitary defects places) to 10−2 m (correlated linked network of defects). Multiscale Image and Video Processing (MultiscaleIVideoP) is designed to process the recorded evolution of material under mechanical deformation in loading machine. The calculations include many parameters of physical process (process rate, magnification, illumination conditions, hardware filters, etc.) and image processing parameters (size distribution, anisotropy, localization, scaling parameters, etc.), hence the calculations are very slow. That is why the extreme need of more powerful computational resources appears. Deploying this application on a Grid computing
infrastructure, utilising hundreds of machines at the same time, allows harnessing sufficient computational power to perform image and video processing on a larger scale and in a much shorter timeframe.
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of MultiScaleIVideoP application at local private IMP
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure:
computing resources at CETA-CIEMAT and at XtremWeb-HEP LAL test infrastructures were obtained and reported in 2009 during the poster session at 4th EDGeS training event and 3rd AlmereGrid Workshop, Almere
, Netherlands
(29–30 March 2009).
In January, 2011 the further scientific results for experiments with cyclic constrained tension of Al foils under video monitoring were obtained and reported.
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 300 to 600% faster).
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of CPDynSG application at local private IMP
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure:
Cracow Grid Workshop'10 (October 11–13, 2010) in oral and poster presentations. The poster presentation was awarded as "The Best Poster of the Cracow Grid Workshop'09".
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 50 to 200% faster).
" and stimulates the modern "Gold Rush
" in material science now. But controlled fabrication of nanoscale functional devices takes careful selection and tuning the critical parameters (elements, interaction potentials, regimes of external influence, temperature, etc.) of atomic self-organization
in designed patterns and structures for nanoscale functional devices. That is why molecular dynamics
simulations of nanofabrication processes with physical parameter decomposition for parameter sweeping in a brute force manner are very promising. For this purpose the very popular non-commercial open-source package "Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator" (LAMMPS)
by Sandia National Laboratories
was selected as a candidate for porting to DCI on the basis of DG. That is why, LAMMPS in “parameter sweeping” parallelism can be ported to DCI on DG. Usually, it takes the powerful computational resources for simulation of nanoobjects with many parameters. The typical simulation of the typical investigated nanostructure under 1 configuration of physical parameters — for instance, metal single crystal (Al
, Cu
, Mo
, etc.) with 107 atoms with embeded atom potentials for 1-10 picoseconds of the simulated physical process — takes approximately 1–7 days on a single modern CPU
.
Deploying LAMMPS
on a Grid computing
infrastructure, utilising hundreds of machines at the same time, allows harnessing sufficient computational power to undertake the simulations in a wider range of physical parameter (configuration) and in a much shorter timeframe.
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of MultiScaleIVideoP application at local private IMP
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure:
, Ukraine
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 300 to 500% faster).
The additional target is migration to OurGrid
platform for testing and demonstrating the potential mechanisms of interoperation between worldwide communities with different DCIs paradigms. SLinCA application will be migrated to OurGrid
platform targeted at the support of peer-to-peer
desktop grids, which are, in nature, very different from volunteer computing
desktop grids such as SZTAKI Desktop Grid
.
Introduction
SLinCA@Home is based at G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics (IMP)G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, the capital of Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. It runs on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics,...
software platform, SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI Desktop Grid is a BOINC project located in Hungary run by the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.- History :...
platform, and Distributed Computing API (DC-API) by SZTAKI
SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI Desktop Grid is a BOINC project located in Hungary run by the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.- History :...
. SLinCA@Home hosts several scientific applications dedicated to search of scale-invariant
Scale invariance
In physics and mathematics, scale invariance is a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energy, or other variables, are multiplied by a common factor...
dependencies in experimental data and results of computer simulations.
History
SLinCA@Home project was previously launched in January, 2009 as part of EDGeS project in Seventh Framework Programme of the European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
for the funding of research and technological development in Europe. During 2009-2010 it used the power of local IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG), but from December 2010 it uses the power of volunteer-driven distributed computing
Distributed computing
Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
in solving the computationally intensive problems related with a search of scale-invariant
Scale invariance
In physics and mathematics, scale invariance is a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energy, or other variables, are multiplied by a common factor...
dependencies in experimentally obtained and simulated scientific data. Now it is operated by group of scientists from IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
NASU in the tight cooperation with partners from IDGF and Distributed Computing team 'Ukraine'. From June 2010 SLinCA@Home works under framework of DEGISCO FP7 EU
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
project.
Current status
Now SLinCA@Home works under alpha-test status, which is related to gradual upgrades of server and client parts.By informal statistics at BOINCstats site (as of 16 March 2011) over 2,000 volunteers in 39 countries have participated in the project, making it the second most popular BOINC project in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
(after Magnetism@Home project, which is not active now). About 700 active users contribute about 0.5-1.5 teraFLOPS
FLOPS
In computing, FLOPS is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations, similar to the older, simpler, instructions per second...
of computational power, which would rank SLinCA@Home among the top 20 on the TOP500
TOP500
The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year...
list of supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
s ... as of June, 2005. :)
Currently, one application (SLinCA) is running at global public IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure (SLinCA@Home), and three others
(MultiScaleIVideoP,
CPDynSG,
LAMMPS over DCI)
are under tests now at local private IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure.
Scientific Applications
SLinCA@Home project has been created to perform searches for previously unknown scale-invariantScale invariance
In physics and mathematics, scale invariance is a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energy, or other variables, are multiplied by a common factor...
dependencies using data from the public data of experiments and simulations in the following scientific applications.
Scaling Laws in Cluster Aggregation (SLinCA)
SLinCA (Scaling Laws in Cluster Aggregation) application was the first application ported to DG infrastructure by the Lab of Physics of Deformation Processes of IMPG.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
of the NASU. Its aim is to find scale invariant laws in kinetic scenarios of monomer aggregation in clusters of different kinds in different scientific domains.
The processes of agent aggregation in clusters are investigated in many branches of science: defect aggregation in materials science, population dynamics in biology, city growth and evolution in sociology, etc. There are experimental data confirming their evolving structure, which is hierarchical on many scales. The available theories give many scenarios of cluster aggregation, formation of hierarchical structures, and their scaling properties. But it takes the powerful computational resources for hierarchical processing of the huge databases of experimental data. The typical simulation of one cluster aggregation process with 106 monomers takes approximately 1–7 days on a single modern CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
, depending on the number of Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo method
Monte Carlo methods are a class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to compute their results. Monte Carlo methods are often used in computer simulations of physical and mathematical systems...
steps (MCS).
Deploying SLinCA on a Grid computing
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
infrastructure, utilising hundreds of machines at the same time, allows harnessing sufficient computational power to undertake the simulations on a larger scale and in a much shorter timeframe. Running the simulations and analysing the results on the Grid provides the required excessive computational power.
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of SLinCA application at global public IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure (SLinCA@Home):
- The current conditions for 1 workunit per 1 CPUCentral processing unitThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
core (2.4 GHz): runtime ~2–4 hours; RAMRam-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
<60 MB; HDD<40 MB. - Checkpoinitng: N/A (under tests now).
- Chronometry of workunit progress: nonlinear.
Scientific Results
The previous scientific results of SLinCA application were obtained on EGEEEgee
Egee was a mythical Libyan queen, known in ancient Greece. Legend says she commanded an army of Amazon women warriors that traveled from Libya to Asia Minor to fight at Troy. Little else is known about her.-References:...
computing resources at CETA-CIEMAT and at XtremWeb-HEP LAL test infrastructures were obtained and reported in 2009 during the poster session at 4th EDGeS training event and 3rd AlmereGrid Workshop, Almere
Almere
Almere is a planned city and municipality in the province of Flevoland, the Netherlands, bordering Lelystad and Zeewolde. The municipality of Almere comprises the districts Almere Stad, Almere Haven, Almere Buiten, Almere Hout, Almere Poort and Almere Pampus .Almere is the youngest city in the...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
(29–30 March 2009).
Future Plans
The current version of SLinCA-application will be upgraded to stable checkpointing, some new functionality, and support of NVIDIANVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 50 to 200% faster).
Multiscale Image and Video Processing (MultiScaleIVideoP)
Optical microscopy is usually used for structural characterization of materials in narrow ranges of magnification, small region of interestRegion of interest
A Region of Interest, often abbreviated ROI, is a selected subset of samples within a dataset identified for a particular purpose.For example:* on a waveform , a time or frequency interval...
(ROI), and in static regime. But many crucial processes of damage initiation and propagation take place dynamically in the wide observable time domain from 10−3 s to 103 s and on the many scales from 10−6 m (solitary defects places) to 10−2 m (correlated linked network of defects). Multiscale Image and Video Processing (MultiscaleIVideoP) is designed to process the recorded evolution of material under mechanical deformation in loading machine. The calculations include many parameters of physical process (process rate, magnification, illumination conditions, hardware filters, etc.) and image processing parameters (size distribution, anisotropy, localization, scaling parameters, etc.), hence the calculations are very slow. That is why the extreme need of more powerful computational resources appears. Deploying this application on a Grid computing
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
infrastructure, utilising hundreds of machines at the same time, allows harnessing sufficient computational power to perform image and video processing on a larger scale and in a much shorter timeframe.
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of MultiScaleIVideoP application at local private IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure:
- Current conditions for 1 workunit per 1 CPUCentral processing unitThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
core (2.4 GHz): time to run ~20–30 minutes; RAMRam-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
<200 MB; HDD<500 MB. - Checkpointing: N/A (under tests now).
- Chronometry of workunit progress: linear.
Scientific Results
The previous scientific results of MultiScaleIVideoP application were obtained on EGEEEgee
Egee was a mythical Libyan queen, known in ancient Greece. Legend says she commanded an army of Amazon women warriors that traveled from Libya to Asia Minor to fight at Troy. Little else is known about her.-References:...
computing resources at CETA-CIEMAT and at XtremWeb-HEP LAL test infrastructures were obtained and reported in 2009 during the poster session at 4th EDGeS training event and 3rd AlmereGrid Workshop, Almere
Almere
Almere is a planned city and municipality in the province of Flevoland, the Netherlands, bordering Lelystad and Zeewolde. The municipality of Almere comprises the districts Almere Stad, Almere Haven, Almere Buiten, Almere Hout, Almere Poort and Almere Pampus .Almere is the youngest city in the...
, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
(29–30 March 2009).
In January, 2011 the further scientific results for experiments with cyclic constrained tension of Al foils under video monitoring were obtained and reported.
Future Plans
The current version of MultiScaleIVideoP application will be upgraded to stable checkpoinitng, some new functionality, and support of NVIDIANVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 300 to 600% faster).
City Population Dynamics and Sustainable Growth (CPDynSG)
In the social sciences, it has been found that the growth of cities (municipalities, lands, counties, etc.) should be explained by migration, merges, population growth, etc. For example, from literature one can found that the city population distribution in many countries is consistent with a power-law form in which the exponent t is close to 2. This is confirmed qualitatively by data for the populations of various cities during their early histories. The population of essentially every major city grows much faster than country as a whole over considerable time range. However, as cities reach maturity, their growth may slow or their population may even decline for reasons unrelated to preferential migration to still larger cities. The different theories give the growth rates, asymptotics, and distributions of such populations. An important feature of application is comparison of available theories, comparison with observations, and prediction of scenarios of population dynamics and sustainable growth for different national and international regions. City Population Dynamics and Sustainable Growth (CPDynSG) application allows to investigate connections between vast volume of experimental data on and found a qualitative correspondence between model predictions and available long time historical data.The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of CPDynSG application at local private IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure:
- The current conditions for 1 workunit per 1 CPUCentral processing unitThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
core (2.4 GHz): time to run ~20–30 minutes; RAMRam-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
<20 MB; HDD<50 MB. - Checkpointing: N/A (under tests now).
- Chronometry of workunit progress: linear.
Scientific Results
In June–September 2010 the previous results on the concept and results of porting application CPDynSG to DCI on the basis of BOINC SZTAKI DG were obtained on city size distributions in several Central and Eastern European countries. The distinctive isolation of the city size distribution in Hungary was noted. The very high similarity in evolution of city size distributions in Ukraine and Poland were discovered. These previous results were reported duringCracow Grid Workshop'10 (October 11–13, 2010) in oral and poster presentations. The poster presentation was awarded as "The Best Poster of the Cracow Grid Workshop'09".
Future Plans
The current version of CPDynSG-application will be upgraded to stable checkpoinitng, some new functionality, and support of NVIDIANVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 50 to 200% faster).
Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS) over DCI
Search for new nanoscale functional devices is considered as "El DoradoEl Dorado
El Dorado is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dived into a highland lake.Later it became the name of a legendary "Lost City of Gold" that has fascinated – and so far eluded – explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors...
" and stimulates the modern "Gold Rush
Gold rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has had a dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.In the 19th and early...
" in material science now. But controlled fabrication of nanoscale functional devices takes careful selection and tuning the critical parameters (elements, interaction potentials, regimes of external influence, temperature, etc.) of atomic self-organization
Self-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
in designed patterns and structures for nanoscale functional devices. That is why molecular dynamics
Molecular dynamics
Molecular dynamics is a computer simulation of physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a period of time, giving a view of the motion of the atoms...
simulations of nanofabrication processes with physical parameter decomposition for parameter sweeping in a brute force manner are very promising. For this purpose the very popular non-commercial open-source package "Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator" (LAMMPS)
LAMMPS
LAMMPS is a molecular dynamics program from Sandia National Laboratories.. LAMMPS makes use of MPI for parallel communication and is a free open-source code, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.LAMMPS was originally developed under a Cooperative Research and Development...
by Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....
was selected as a candidate for porting to DCI on the basis of DG. That is why, LAMMPS in “parameter sweeping” parallelism can be ported to DCI on DG. Usually, it takes the powerful computational resources for simulation of nanoobjects with many parameters. The typical simulation of the typical investigated nanostructure under 1 configuration of physical parameters — for instance, metal single crystal (Al
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....
, Cu
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, Mo
Molybdenum
Molybdenum , is a Group 6 chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42. The name is from Neo-Latin Molybdaenum, from Ancient Greek , meaning lead, itself proposed as a loanword from Anatolian Luvian and Lydian languages, since its ores were confused with lead ores...
, etc.) with 107 atoms with embeded atom potentials for 1-10 picoseconds of the simulated physical process — takes approximately 1–7 days on a single modern CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
.
Deploying LAMMPS
LAMMPS
LAMMPS is a molecular dynamics program from Sandia National Laboratories.. LAMMPS makes use of MPI for parallel communication and is a free open-source code, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.LAMMPS was originally developed under a Cooperative Research and Development...
on a Grid computing
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
infrastructure, utilising hundreds of machines at the same time, allows harnessing sufficient computational power to undertake the simulations in a wider range of physical parameter (configuration) and in a much shorter timeframe.
The typical technical parameters for running the DG-enabled version of MultiScaleIVideoP application at local private IMP
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
G.V.Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is of the oldest research institutions of physical science within the Academy...
Desktop Grid (DG) infrastructure:
- The current conditions for 1 workunit per 1 CPUCentral processing unitThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
core (2.4 GHz): time to run ~2–48 hours; RAMRam-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
<500 MB; HDD<1 GB. - Checkpointing: N/A (under tests now).
- Chronometry of workunit progress: linear.
Scientific Results
In September–October 2010 the previous results were obtained and reported in oral presentation during International Conference “Nanostructured materials-2010”, KievKiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
Future Plans
The current version of LAMMPS over DCI application will be upgraded to stable checkpoinitng, some new functionality, and support of NVIDIANVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
GPU-computing to perform the analysis faster (by estimations from 300 to 500% faster).
The additional target is migration to OurGrid
OurGrid
OurGrid is an opensource grid middleware based on a peer-to-peer architecture.OurGrid is mainly develop at the Federal University of Campina Grande , which also run an OurGrid instance named "OurGrid" too, in production since December 2004. Anyone can freely and easily join it to gain access to...
platform for testing and demonstrating the potential mechanisms of interoperation between worldwide communities with different DCIs paradigms. SLinCA application will be migrated to OurGrid
OurGrid
OurGrid is an opensource grid middleware based on a peer-to-peer architecture.OurGrid is mainly develop at the Federal University of Campina Grande , which also run an OurGrid instance named "OurGrid" too, in production since December 2004. Anyone can freely and easily join it to gain access to...
platform targeted at the support of peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
desktop grids, which are, in nature, very different from volunteer computing
Volunteer computing
Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which computer owners donate their computing resources to one or more "projects".-History:...
desktop grids such as SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI Desktop Grid
SZTAKI Desktop Grid is a BOINC project located in Hungary run by the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.- History :...
.
Partners
SLinCA@Home collaborates with- partners in FP7 EUEuropean UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
projects: - volunteer communities participating in distributed computingDistributed computingDistributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
: - professional communities of experts in distributed computingDistributed computingDistributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
:
Awards
- 2009 - For the Best Poster of the Cracow Grid Workshop'09, Cracow, Poland (October 12–14, 2009) - the report on the concept and results of porting MultiScaleIVideoP application with 4GL MATLABMATLABMATLAB is a numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language. Developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages,...
-libraries to DCI on the basis of BOINC SZTAKI Desktop GridSZTAKI Desktop GridSZTAKI Desktop Grid is a BOINC project located in Hungary run by the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.- History :...
platform, and XtremWeb-HEP platform, where applicability of integration of MATLABMATLABMATLAB is a numerical computing environment and fourth-generation programming language. Developed by MathWorks, MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages,...
objects and codes in a DG for high-performance distributed computingDistributed computingDistributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
is demonstrated on the example of image and video processing in solid state physics and microscopy.
- 2010 - For the Best Poster of the Cracow Grid Workshop'10, Cracow, Poland (October 11–13, 2010) - the report on the concept and results of porting CPDynSG application to DCI on the basis of BOINC SZTAKI Desktop GridSZTAKI Desktop GridSZTAKI Desktop Grid is a BOINC project located in Hungary run by the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.- History :...
platform, with comparative analysis of available theories with experimenatl observations, and typical scenarios of population dynamics and sustainable growth for different countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
See also
- Distributed computingDistributed computingDistributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
- List of distributed computing projects
- Enabling Desktop Grids for e-Science (EDGeS)
- OurGridOurGridOurGrid is an opensource grid middleware based on a peer-to-peer architecture.OurGrid is mainly develop at the Federal University of Campina Grande , which also run an OurGrid instance named "OurGrid" too, in production since December 2004. Anyone can freely and easily join it to gain access to...