Sandia
National Laboratories | California 
| Nov. 12, 2001 | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative partners offer scientific visualization networking demonstration
DENVER, Colo. — Efficiently storing and moving hundreds of terabytes of information across networks through standard protocols remains a key challenge of the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), and is the focus of demonstrations by more than a dozen collaborating businesses and government research laboratories today at the Supercomputing 2001 annual meeting.
The demonstration will focus on improving utilization of available bandwidth
for interactive scientific visualization. “This powerful technique
for scientists to manipulate and intuitively grasp data is particularly
suited to high-speed networking, since collaborators are often widely
distributed geographically and the calculations are information-rich,”
said Mike Koszykowski, of Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif.,
who is the ASCI Program Manager for the Problem Solving Environment (PSE)
initiative. To promote standard technology development, ASCI PSE researchers
at Sandia, Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories (the
Trilab Testbed) are collaborating with researchers in the Distance Computing
(DISCOM), Visual Interactive Environment for Weapons Simulation (VIEWS)
and Scalable I/O (SIO) initiatives.
Industry partners include: AT&T (NYSE: T), Avici Systems (NASDQ: AVCI),
Brocade (NASDQ: BRCD), DataDirect Networks, Nishan Systems, Riverstone
Networks Inc. (NASDQ: RSTN), Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI), Spirent
Communications (NYSE: SPM), Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDQ: SUNW) and VERITAS
Software Corporation (NASDQ: VRTS).
Avici Systems’ TSR ® and SSR™ core routers serve as the
foundation for the backbone network. In addition, Avici’s Composite
Links™ technology provides load balancing and fast failover over
the Wide Area Network (WAN) Trilab testbed. Spirent SmartBits provides
a fibre channel performance testing device to measure the overall latency
and total throughput of the storage network. Spirent Adtech provides the
WAN emulation tool to help simulate real-world network impairments such
as latency and frame-loss. Riverstone contributes RS 8000 series metropolitan
aggregation routers that differentiate traffic for receiving desirable
Quality of Services from the Avici-based backbone network. Riverstone's
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology addresses critical Quality
of Service issues by providing highly secure, end-to-end MPLS tunnels
for data traffic across an entire metro network. Nishan Systems presents
IP Storage switches that implement the emerging iSCSI and iFCP protocols
for extending the Fibre Channel (FC) Storage Area Networks (SAN) over
the IP network. Brocade is providing Silkworm 6400 FC fabrics that interconnect
the SGI Onyx3, Sun Fire 4800, and the DataDirect Network’s storage
subsystems.
DataDirect Networks and Sun Microsystems bring terabytes of fast, virtualized
Fibre Channel storage to hold the large datasets for the scientific visualization
demo. VERITAS ServPoint™ Appliance Software for SAN , running on
a Sun Fire 4800 Server, virtualizes heterogeneous storage devices and
natively provides WAN connectivity utilizing the iSCSI protocol. The appliance
software also interoperates with the Nishan Systems IPS 4300 hardware
to provide an alternate high performance WAN solution. Additionally, VERITAS
SANPoint Control™, running on a Sun Blade 1000 Workstation, is being
used for the SAN configuration and management. Following the demonstrations,
the partners will validate test results over an operational AT&T WAN.
AT&T is providing and managing an OC-48 (2.5Gb/s) wavelength service
between customer premises in Albuquerque, N.M. to Livermore over AT&T’s
next-generation optical network.
ASCI provides modeling and simulation capability for the Department of
Energy’s Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship activities at the three
Defense Programs laboratories (Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore).
Advanced computations and three-dimensional modeling and simulation are
developed to ensure safe and reliable maintenance of the nation's nuclear
arsenal in the absence of nuclear testing. The SC2001 demonstration, in
booth R375, shows an animation of the mixing of light fuel bubbles in
supersonic combustors subjected to a shock wave.
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| Media Contact: | |
| Nancy Garcia | |
| Sandia/CA Public Affairs | |
| (925) 294-2932 |
Nov. 12, 2001
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