[Federal Register: March 17, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 52)]
[Notices]
[Page 12648-12651]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr17mr04-60]
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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Office of Science Financial Assistance Program Notice DE-FG01-
04ER04-13; Operating/Runtime Systems for Extreme Scale Scientific
Computation
AGENCY: U.S. Department of Energy.
ACTION: Notice inviting grant applications.
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SUMMARY: The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) of
the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby
announces its interest in receiving applications for research grants in
the area of operating and runtime systems for extreme scale scientific
computation. Partnerships among universities, National Laboratories,
and industry are encouraged. The full text of Program Notice 04-13, is
available via the Internet using the following Web site address: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html
.
DATES: Preapplications referencing Program Notice 04-13, should be
received by March 26, 2004.
Formal applications in response to this notice should be received
by 4:30 p.m., Eastern Time, May 4, 2004, to be accepted for merit
review and funding in Fiscal Year 2004.
ADDRESSES: Preapplications referencing Program Notice 04-13, should be
sent via e-mail using the following address:
osruntime.preproposal@science.doe.gov with a copy to
fjohnson@er.doe.gov.
Formal applications referencing Program Notice 04-13, must be sent
electronically by an authorized institutional business official through
DOE's Industry Interactive Procurement System (IIPS) at: http://e-center.doe.gov.
IIPS provides for the posting of solicitations and
receipt of applications in a paperless environment via the Internet. In
order to submit applications through IIPS your business official will
need to register at the IIPS Web site. IIPS offers the option of using
multiple files, please limit submissions to one volume and one file if
possible, with a maximum of no more than four PDF files. The Office of
Science will include attachments as part of this notice that provide
the appropriate forms in PDF fillable format that are to be submitted
through IIPS. Color images should be submitted in IIPS as a separate
file in PDF format and identified as such. These images should be kept
to a minimum due to the limitations of reproducing them. They should be
numbered and referred to in the body of the technical scientific
application as Color image 1, Color image 2, etc. Questions regarding
the operation of IIPS may be E-mailed to the IIPS Help Desk at:
HelpDesk@pr.doe.gov or you may call the help desk at: (800) 683-0751.
Further information on the use of IIPS by the Office of Science is
available at: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html.
If you are unable to submit the application through IIPS, please
contact the Grants and Contracts Division, Office of Science at: (301)
903-5212 or (301) 903-3604, in order to gain assistance for submission
through IIPS or to receive special approval and instruction on how to
submit printed applications.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Frederick Johnson, U.S. Department
of Energy, Office of Science, SC-31/Germantown Building, 1000
Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585-1290, telephone: (301)
903-3601, fax: (301) 903-7774, E-mail: fjohnson@er.doe.gov.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
The Forum to Address Scalable Technologies for Runtime and
Operating Systems (FAST-OS) has conducted a series of workshops focused
on issues associated with operating and runtime systems for very large
computing systems used for high end scientific modeling and simulation.
This workshop series was sponsored by the Office of Advanced Scientific
Computing Research of the DOE Office of Science. The most recent
workshop was held in July 2003, and the final report, together with
other results of the workshop series may be found at: http://www.cs.unm.edu/fastos.
An interagency workshop, the Workshop on the
Roadmap for the Revitalization of High-End Computing was held in June
of 2003. Section 5 of the workshop report addresses runtime and
operating systems. The charter of the researchers that produced this
section was to establish baseline capabilities required in the
operating systems for projected High-End Computing systems scaled to
the end of this decade and determine the critical advances that must be
undertaken to meet these goals. The report is available at: http://www.itrd.gov/hecrtf-outreach/20040112_cra_hecrtf_report.pdf
.
Background Operating and Runtime Systems (OS/R)
Operating and runtime systems provide mechanisms to manage system
hardware and software resources for the efficient execution of large
scale scientific applications. They are essential to the success of
both large scale systems and complex applications. By the end of this
decade petascale computers with thousands of times more computational
power than any in current use will be vital tools for expanding the
frontiers of science and for addressing vital national priorities.
These systems will have tens to hundreds of thousands of processors, an
unprecedented level of complexity, and will require significant new
levels of scalability and fault management. The overwhelming size and
complexity of such systems poses deep technical challenges that must be
overcome to fully exploit their potential for scientific discovery.
Applications require multiple services from OS/R layers, including:
resource management and scheduling, fault-management (detection,
prediction, recovery, and reconfiguration), configuration management,
and file systems access and management. Current and future large-scale
parallel systems require that such services be implemented in a fast
and scalable manner so that the OS/R does not become a performance
bottleneck. The current trend in large-scale scientific systems is to
leverage operating systems developed for other areas of computing--
operating systems that were not specifically designed for large-scale,
parallel computing platforms. Unix, Linux and other Unix derivatives
are the most popular OS's in use for high end scientific computing, and
these all reflect a technological heritage nearly 30 years old with no
fundamental mechanisms to support parallel systems.
Without reliable, robust operating systems and runtime environments
the computational science research community will be unable to easily
and completely employ future generations of extreme systems for
scientific discovery. The application research community will miss
important scientific opportunities in areas such as computational
fusion, nanotechnology, and computational biology that are on the
threshold of rapid advance through the innovative use of extreme-scale
scientific computation. New investments in both basic and applied
research are required to maintain the creative pace established by
terascale computation for scientific discovery.
Background: High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HECRTF) and
Academic Research
During the past summer, several federal agencies with interests in
high performance computing participated in the HECRTF and developed a
plan for future government investments in high-end computing. As part
of this plan a renewed emphasis has been placed on coordination of
federally-funded
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research in this area. As a major contributor to the HECRTF activity,
the Office of Science is a leading participant in the coordination of
research investments. The research activities described in this Notice
have been coordinated with participating HECRTF research agencies, and
this coordination will continue throughout the lifetime of the research
activities. Additional information on the HECRTF may be found at:
http://www.itrd.gov/hecrtf-outreach/index.html.
The Opportunity and the Challenge
By the end of this decade extreme scale systems will be available
that are based on a variety of challenging architectures ranging from
distributed memory clusters of unprecedented scale to the systems
resulting from the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems program
that are likely to be based upon innovative architectural concepts,
such as PIMs, FPGAs, and complex memory hierarchies that have no analog
in today's terascale systems. Systems with tens to hundreds of
thousands of processors and new architectural concepts will differ
greatly in scale and complexity from today's systems, and this
difference will place new and very difficult challenges on OS/R design
and implementation.
There are many fundamental questions in operating system and
runtime research that must be explored in order to enable scientific
application developers and users to achieve maximum effectiveness and
efficiency on this new generation of systems, including (but not
limited to):
Ease of use. Application users need a coherent,
cohesive picture of these huge systems--they need to be able to look at
jobs running on 100,000 processors in a meaningful way.
Support for architectural innovation. Current
operating systems often limit hardware innovation through the use of a
hardware abstraction layer that cannot support innovative hardware
paradigms.
Dynamic support for multiple management
policies. Current operating systems limit application development
through the use of fixed resource management policies rather than
dynamic policies responsive to changing application needs.
Leveraging mainstream technology. Strategies are
needed that enable OS/R systems developed to meet specialized needs of
the HEC community to leverage the talents and technology development of
the mainstream open source OS community.
Support for fault tolerance. Extreme scale
systems will require innovative new approaches to OS/R support for
fault detection and management. Interrupts are likely to be the norm
rather than the exception during any lengthy application run.
Rethinking the OS in terms of scalability and
usability. We need to determine how HPC requirements differ from those
of general computing. HPC requirement differences will surely continue
to dictate innovation in both OS structure and exported interfaces.
Scalability of operating systems. What should an
operating system for a hundred thousand processor machine look like? Is
a hierarchical approach best? How can the operating system make a
fundamentally unreliable machine, in which some components are always
broken, continue to effectively function?
Self awareness and optimization. How can an
extreme scale system (hardware and software) monitor and adapt to meet
changing requirements of long running applications?
Technical challenges such as these represent an opportunity for
basic and applied research to provide new insights into mechanisms for
harnessing the potential of next generation extreme-scale systems.
Investment Plan of the Office of Science
The Secretary of Energy recently released a twenty year vision and
plan for research facilities in the Office of Science in the document,
Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty-Year Outlook. A copy of
the plan may be found at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/Sub/Facilities_for_future/20-Year-Outlook-screen.pdf.
The plan contains a prioritized list
of new research facilities, and the number two priority is an
UltraScale Scientific Computing Capability (USSCC), which will increase
by at least a factor of 100 the computing capability available to
support open scientific research and which will reduce from years to
days the time required to simulate complex systems of interest to the
Department. When fully realized, the computing capability of the USSCC
will enable computation-based scientific advances that are unachievable
by current large-scale computing systems. USSCC systems will place new
and critical demands on operating systems and runtime environments to
support complex applications and enable these systems to reach their
full potential. The research supported by this notice is a critical
step towards developing OS and runtime systems able to meet these
needs.
Solicitation Emphasis
This notice is focused on research and development of operating and
runtime systems which enable the effective management and use of
extreme-scale systems (petascale and above) for scientific computation.
The overall goal of this notice is to stimulate research and
development related to operating and runtime systems for petascale
systems in the 2010 timeframe. It is likely that these systems will
include a combination of commodity and custom components, with
different systems reflecting different degrees of customization. The
research into runtime and operating systems must be driven from the
needs of current and future applications. The primary focus is on
supporting the needs of existing and anticipated SC and other DOE
applications; however, the resulting systems should address issues
related to the broader HEC code base. An ultimate and perhaps
idealistic goal would be to develop a unified runtime and operating
system that could fully support and exploit petascale and beyond
systems and autonomously adapt for performance, upgrades, security, and
fault tolerance. The activities supported by this notice may be a
combination of basic and applied research, development, prototyping,
testing and ultimately deployment.
Example Research Topics
Runtime and operating systems provide the glue that bind running
applications to hardware. The research activities supported by this
activity need to bridge the gap between new languages and/or
programming models and next-generation hardware, including interactions
with novel architectures. Consequently, there are a wide variety of
research topics that are appropriate for this effort. A brief listing
of candidate topics is provided below, but research in other relevant
areas and combinations of areas is encouraged:
Virtualization. A key aspect of OS/R systems is
that they provide ``virtual devices.'' Virtualization must balance ease
of use by detail hiding vs achieving scalability and performance by
exploiting details.
Adaptation. Traditionally, runtime and operating
systems have been designed to provide a fixed set of services and to
provide a single implementation for each of these services. Future
runtime and operating systems will need to provide different sets of
services and/or different implementations of these services based on
the needs of applications and/or characteristics of the underlying
system.
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Usage models. Large machines have typically been
used in batch mode. Other modes of operation, including interactive
usage for computational steering will also need to be supported in the
future.
Metrics. Metrics, benchmarks, and test suites
are needed to evaluate progress and guide design. Challenges include
determining what to measure and how to generate understandable
analyses. Benchmarks and test suites must accurately reflect the needs
of applications.
Support for fault handling in OS and run-time.
Many jobs will encounter an interrupt in service during their
execution. Research is needed to address all aspects of fault
tolerance, including fault detection, anticipation, management and
tolerance. Research in checkpointing systems is also needed.
Memory hierarchy management. It is clear that
the memory hierarchy is going to become deeper and/or more complex.
Applications will need significantly improved support for managing
memory.
Security. Scalable security mechanisms are
needed to support new authorization, authentication and access control
requirements.
Common API. Research in common runtime/OS API's
is required to greatly enhance application portability and ease the
introduction of new systems. The current POSIX standard has been
beneficial to the general community, but it is lacking in the support
of high-end systems.
Scalable, single-system image. In principle, the
ability to treat a very large system as a single system has many
advantages and provides significant simplifications from an end user
perspective. However, it is not clear what the technical trade-offs are
for single system image technology at extreme scale, and additional
research is needed.
Parallel and Network I/O. Some classes of future
HEC systems will have specialized interconnect fabrics to provide
communications and data movement among processors or groups of
processors or storage devices. Operating systems and/or runtime systems
will be required to share, schedule, and control these resources.
OS Support for efficient interprocessor
communication. Standard OS's do not recognize the concept of a parallel
job. Support is needed for global operations which minimize local
variations and avoid degradation of performance for the whole job.
Light-weight low-level communication paradigms.
Research in light-weight and low level communication mechanisms is
needed to improve scalability and performance.
Community Building
An important goal of this notice is to foster the development of an
active research community in operating systems and runtime environments
for high end systems. In order to meet this goal the following are
mandatory requirements for awardees:
All developed code must be released under the
most permissive open source license possible. This is to enable other
researchers and vendors to build upon research successes with a minimum
of intellectual property issues.
Each research team should plan to send
representatives to annual or semi-annual PI meetings and give
presentations on the status and promise of their research. Meeting
attendees will include invited participates from other relevant
research communities, including the Linux community. Objectives of
these meetings are to foster a sense of community and serve as a venue
for exchange of information. These meetings will also serve as a means
to exchange information on complementary programs including the DARPA
HPCS program, NNSA ASC program and SciDAC.
Frameworks and Novel Approaches
Operating system and runtime research often requires a large
overhead of supporting infrastructure code, such as device drivers,
that must be developed before undertaking the core ideas of the
research. This may be alleviated if an existing OS framework, such as
Linux, K42, or Plan9, is chosen as a base of the research. Applications
to this notice may choose to use an existing framework for their OS/
Runtime research or they may propose to develop a new framework as part
of the research activity. Any proposed new framework must be described
and discussed at the community PI meetings. Smaller novel approaches
are also encouraged.
Testbed Strategy
Testbeds are essential to the future of the research sponsored by
this notice, and the development of an effective testbed strategy is an
important overall objective. Each proposal should contain a section
which discusses the characteristics of the test environments necessary
for the research and identify the time frames in which specific testbed
support will be required.
Operating system and runtime applications to the ASCR base programs
through the Continuing Solicitation for all Office of Science Programs
Notice 04-01, found at: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html
, which may have the potential for contributing to extreme
scale systems, should so indicate.
Collaboration
Applicants are encouraged to collaborate with researchers in other
institutions, such as universities, industry, non-profit organizations,
federal laboratories and Federally Funded Research and Development
Centers (FFRDCs), including the DOE National Laboratories, where
appropriate, and to include cost sharing wherever feasible. Additional
information on collaboration is available in the Application Guide for
the Office of Science Financial Assistance Program that is available
via the Internet at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/grants/Colab.html
.
Program Funding
It is anticipated that up to $3 million annually will be available
for multiple awards for this program. Initial awards will be made late
in Fiscal Year 2004 or early Fiscal Year 2005, in the categories
described above, and applications may request project support for up to
three years. All awards are contingent on the availability of funds and
programmatic needs. Annual budgets for successful projects are expected
to range from $500,000 to $1,500,000 per project although smaller
projects of exceptional merit may be considered. Annual budgets may
increase in the out-years but should remain within the overall annual
maximum guidance. Any proposed effort that exceeds the annual maximum
in the out-years should be separately identified for potential award
increases if additional funds become available. DOE is under no
obligation to pay for any costs associated with the preparation or
submission of applications if an award is not made.
Preapplications
Preapplications are strongly encouraged but not required prior to
submission of a full application. However, notification of a successful
preapplication is not an indication that an award will be made in
response to the formal application. The preapplication should identify
on the cover sheet the institution(s), Principal Investigator name(s),
address(es), telephone, and fax number(s) and E-mail address(es), and
the title of the project. A brief (one-page) vitae should be provided
for each Principal Investigator. The preapplication should
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consist of a two to three page narrative describing the research
project objectives, the approach to be taken, a description of any
research partnerships, the duration, and an annual cost estimate.
Merit Review
Applications will be subjected to scientific merit review (peer
review) and will be evaluated against the following evaluation criteria
listed in descending order of importance as codified at 10 CFR
605.10(d):
1. Scientific and/or Technical Merit of the Project,
2. Appropriateness of the Proposed Method or Approach,
3. Competency of Applicant's Personnel and Adequacy of Proposed
Resources,
4. Reasonableness and Appropriateness of the Proposed Budget.
The evaluation of applications under item 1, Scientific and Technical
Merit, will pay particular attention to:
(a) The potential of the proposed project to make a significant
impact in operating systems and runtime research.
(b) The demonstrated capabilities of the applicants to perform
basic research related to operating systems/runtime and transform these
research results into software that can be widely deployed.
(c) The likelihood that the methodologies and software components
that result from this effort will have a substantial impact on the
operating system research and vendor community outside of the projects.
The evaluation under item 2, Appropriateness of the Proposed Method
or Approach, will also consider the following elements related to
Quality of Planning:
(a) Quality of the plan for effective coupling of operating system
and runtime research, with application needs and transition to testbed
environments.
(b) Quality and clarity of proposed work schedule and deliverables.
(c) Quality of the proposed approach to intellectual property
management and open source licensing.
Note that external peer reviewers are selected with regard to both
their scientific expertise and the absence of conflict-of-interest
issues. Non-federal reviewers may be used, and submission of an
application constitutes agreement that this is acceptable to the
investigator(s) and the submitting institution. Reviewers will be
selected to represent expertise in the technology areas proposed,
applications groups that are potential users of the technology, and
related programs in other Federal Agencies or parts of DOE, such as the
Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) within DOE's National
Nuclear Security Administration.
Information about the development and submission of applications,
eligibility, limitations, evaluation, selection process, and other
policies and procedures including detailed procedures for submitting
applications from multi-institution partnerships may be found in 10 CFR
part 605, and in the Application Guide for the Office of Science
Financial Assistance Program. Electronic access to the Guide and
required forms is made available via the World Wide Web at: http://www.science.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html.
The Project
Description must be 20 pages or less, including tables and figures, but
exclusive of attachments. The application must contain an abstract or
project summary, letters of intent from collaborators, and short vitae.
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number for this program
is 81.049, and the solicitation control number is ERFAP 10 CFR part
605.
Issued in Washington, DC on March 10, 2004.
Martin Rubinstein,
Acting Director, Grants and Contracts Division, Office of Science.
[FR Doc. 04-5997 Filed 3-16-04; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P