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From: Robert Edwards <edwards@jlab.org>
Subject: 2013 USQCD Call for Proposals
Date: January 31, 2013 7:59:04 PM CST
To: members@usqcd.org
Dear Colleagues,
This message is a Call for Proposals for awards of time on the USQCD
computer resources dedicated to lattice QCD and other lattice field
theories. These are the clusters at Fermilab and JLab, the
GPU-clusters at Fermilab and JLab, the BG/Q at BNL, and awards to
USQCD from the INCITE program.
In this allocation year, we expect to distribute about
71 M BG/Q core-hours at BNL
340 M Jpsi-core hours on clusters at FNAL and JLAB
7.8 M GPU-hours on GPU clusters at FNAL and JLAB
140 M XK7 core-hours at Oak Ridge OLCF (*)
250 M BG/Q core-hours at Argonne ALCF (*)
Percentage of available zero priority time on the
BG/Q and BG/P (**) at ALCF
32 M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours which we
expect to charge for disc and tape usage.
(*) estimate based on CY2013; available in the first few months of CY2014 only.
(**) only for the second half of CY2013
Further remarks on the nature of the INCITE award and additional
requirements for projects that apply for resources on leadership class
computers are given in section (iv).
All members of the USQCD Collaboration are eligible to submit
proposals. Those interested in joining the Collaboration should
contact Paul Mackenzie (mackenzie@fnal.gov).
Let us begin with some important dates:
=======================================
January 31: this Call for Proposals
March 8: proposals due for Type A proposals
April 5: reports to proponents sent out
April 19/20: All Hands' Meeting at BNL (ending ~5pm)
May 31: allocations announced
NOTE: zero-priority at ALCF will start before
July 1. (see section (iv))
July 1: new allocations start
The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) will request some number of
presentations by the proponents of proposals at the All Hands'
Meeting. Proponents may in general request to make an oral
presentation of their proposals; however, the logistical constraints
of the meeting may preclude some number of talks.
The web site for the All Hands' Meeting is
http://www.usqcd.org/meetings/allHands2013/
The requests can be of three types:
A) requests for potentially large amounts of time on USQCD
dedicated resources and/or leadership class computers, to
support calculations of benefit for the whole USQCD
Collaboration and/or addressing critical scientific needs.
There is no minimum size to the request. However, small
requests will be not considered suitable for leadership
resources. Allocations are for one year on USQCD resources.
B) requests for medium amounts of time on USQCD dedicated
resources intended to support calculations in an early stage of
development which address, or have the potential to address,
scientific needs of the collaboration;
--- No maximum, but encouraged to be below 2.5 M
Jpsi-equivalent core-hours or less on clusters, or 100 K
GPU hours or less on GPU clusters. No suggested size for
BNL BG/Q requests ---
Allocations are for up to 6 months.
C) requests for exploratory calculations, such as those needed to
develop and/or benchmark code, acquire expertise on the use of
the machines, or to perform investigations of limited scope.
The amount of time used by such projects should not exceed
100 K Jpsi core-hours on clusters or 10 K GPU-hours on the
GPU-clusters. Requests for BG/Q at BNL should be handled on a
case basis.
Requests of Type A and B must be made in writing to the Scientific
Program Committee and are subject to the policies spelled out below.
These proposals must also specify the amount of disk and tape storage
needed. Projects will be charged for new disks and tapes as well as
existing disk usage. How this will be implemented is discussed in
section (iii).
Requests of Type B can be made anytime of the year, and will start in
the nearest month. Requests should be sent in an e-mail message to
Robert Edwards (edwards@jlab.org).
Requests of Type C should be made in an e-mail message to
Paul Mackenzie (mackenzie@fnal.gov) for clusters at FNAL,
Robert Mawhinney (rdm@physics.columbia.edu) for the BG/Q at BNL,
Chip Watson (Chip.Watson@jlab.org) for clusters at JLAB.
Type B requests will be considered up to a total not exceeding 15% of
the available time on USQCD hardware. Type C requests will be
considered up to a total not exceeding 5% of the available time on
USQCD hardware. If the demand exceeds such limits, the Scientific
Program Committee will reconsider the procedures for access.
Collaboration members who wish to perform calculations on USQCD
hardware or on resources awarded to USQCD through the INCITE program
can present requests according to procedures specified below. The
Scientific Program Committee would like to handle requests and awards
on leadership class computers and cluster in their respective units,
namely Bluegene or Cray hours.Requests on the GPU clusters will be
handled in GPU hours, and requests for the BG/Q will be handled in
BG/Q hours. Conversion factors for clusters, GPUs, and leadership
class computers are given below. As projects usually are not flexible
enough to switch between running on GPUs, BG/Q, and clusters, we
choose to allocate in their respective units. However, as nominal
conversion factors are available, we describe at the end of the
document the total resources available to USQCD in TFlop-years.
- o -
The rest of this message deals with requests of Types A and B. It is
organized as follows:
i) policy directives regarding the usage of awarded resources;
ii) guidelines for the format of the proposals and deadline for
submission;
iii) procedures that will be followed to reach a consensus on the
research programs and the allocations;
iv) policies for handling awards on leadership-class machines
v) description of USQCD resources at Fermilab and JLAB
i) Policy directives.
1) This Call for Proposals is for calculations that will further the
physics goals of the USQCD Collaboration, as stated in the proposals
for funding submitted to the DOE (see http://www.usqcd.org/), and have
the potential of benefiting additional research projects by members of
the Collaboration. In particular, the scientific goals are described
in the science sections of the recent SciDAC proposals, which are
placed on the same web-site.
2) Proposals of Type A are for investigations of very large scale,
which may require a substantial fraction of the available resources.
Proposals of Type B are for investigations in an early stage of
development, and are medium to large scale which will require a
smaller amount of resources. There is no strict lower limit for
requests within Type A proposals, and there is no upper limit on Type
B Proposals. However, Type B requests for significantly more than 2.5
M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours on clusters or more than 100 K hours on
GPU-clusters, will receive significant scrutiny.
Proposals that request time on the leadership-class computers at
Argonne and Oak Ridge should be of Type A and should demonstrate that
they (i) can efficiently make use of large partitions of leadership
class computers, and (ii) will run more efficiently on leadership
class computers than on clusters.
3) All Type A and B proposals are expected to address the scientific
needs of the USQCD Collaboration. Proposals of Type A are for
investigations that benefit the whole USQCD Collaboration. Thus it is
expected that the calculations will either produce data, such as
lattice gauge fields or quark propagators, that can be used by the
entire Collaboration, or that the calculations produce physics results
listed among the Collaboration's strategic goals.
Accordingly, proponents planning to generate multi-purpose data must
describe in their proposal what data will be made available to the
whole Collaboration, and how soon, and specify clearly what physics
analyses they would like to perform in an "exclusive manner" on these
data (see below), and the expected time to complete them.
Similarly, proponents planning important physics analyses should
explain how the proposed work meets our strategic goals and how its
results would interest the broader physics community.
Projects generating multi-purpose data are clear candidates to use
USQCD's award(s) on leadership-class computers. Therefore, these
proposals must provide additional information on several fronts: they
should
demonstrate the potential to be of broad benefit, for example by
providing a list of other projects that would use the shared data,
or how the strategic scientific needs of USQCD are addressed;
present a roadmap for future planning, presenting, for example,
criteria for deciding when to stop with one ensemble and start with
another;
discuss how they would cope with a substantial increase in allocated
resources, from the portability of the code and storage needed to
the availability of competent personnel to carry out the running;
Some projects carrying out strategic analyses are candidates for
running on the leadership-class machines. They should provide the same
information as above.
4) Proposals of Type B are not required to share data, although if
they do so it is a plus. Type B proposals may also be scientifically
valuable even if not closely aligned with USQCD goals. In that case
the proposal should contain a clear discussion of the physics
motivations. If appropriate, Type B proposals may discuss
data-sharing and strategic importance as in the case of Type A
proposals.
5) The data that will be made available to the whole Collaboration
will have to be released promptly. "Promptly" should be interpreted
with common sense. Lattice gauge fields and propagators do not have
to be released as they are produced, especially if the group is still
testing the production environment. On the other hand, it is not
considered reasonable to delay release of, say, 444 files, just
because the last 56 will not be available for a few months.
After a period during which such data will remain for the exclusive
use of the members of the USQCD Collaboration, and possibly of members
of other collaborations under reciprocal agreements, the data will be
made available worldwide as decided by the Executive Committee.
6) The USQCD Collaboration recognizes that the production of shared
data will generally entail a substantial amount of work by the
investigators generating the data. They should therefore be given
priority in analyzing the data, particularly for their principal
physics interests. Thus, proponents are encouraged to outline a set
of physics analyses that they would like to carry out with these data
in an exclusive manner and the amount of time that they would like to
reserve to themselves to complete such calculations.
When using the shared data, all other members of the USQCD
collaboration agree to respect such exclusivity. Thus, they shall
refrain from using the data to reproduce the reserved or closely
similar analyses. In its evaluation of the proposals the Scientific
Program Committee will in particular examine the requests for
exclusive use of the data and will ask the proposers to revise it in
case the request was found too broad or excessive in any other form.
Once an accepted proposal has been posted on the Collaboration
website, it should be deemed by all parties that the request for
exclusive use has been accepted by the Scientific Program Committee.
Any dispute that may arise in regards to the usage of such data will
have to be directed to the Scientific Program Committee for resolution
and all members of the Collaboration should abide by the decisions of
this Committee.
7) Usage of the USQCD software, developed under our SciDAC grants, is
recommended, but not required. USQCD software is designed to be
efficient and portable, and its development leverages efforts
throughout the Collaboration. If you use this software, the SPC can
be confident that your project can use USQCD resources efficiently.
Software developed outside the collaboration must be documented to
show that it performs efficiently on its target platform(s).
Information on portability is welcome, but not mandatory.
8) The investigators whose proposals have been selected by the
Scientific Program Committee for a possible award of USQCD resources
shall agree to have their proposals posted on a password protected
website, available only to our Collaboration, for consideration during
the All Hands' Meeting.
9) The investigators receiving a Type A allocation of time following
this Call for Proposals must maintain a public web page that
reasonably documents their plans, progress, and the availability of
data. These pages should contain information that funding agencies
and review panels can use to determine whether USQCD is a well-run
organization. The public web page need not contain unpublished
scientific results, or other sensitive information.
The SPC will not accept new proposals from old projects that still
have no web page. Please communicate the URL to mackenzie@fnal.gov
ii) Format of the proposals and deadline for submission.
The proposals should contain a title page with title, abstract and the
listing of all participating investigators. The body, including
bibliography and embedded figures, should not exceed 12 pages in
length for requests of Type A, and 10 pages in length for requests of
Type B, with font size of 11pt or larger. If necessary, further
figures, with captions but without text, can be appended, for a
maximum of 8 additional pages. CVs, publication lists and similar
personal information are not requested and should not be submitted.
Title page, proposal body and optional appended figures should be
submitted as a single pdf file, in an attachment to an e-mail message
sent to edwards@jlab.org
The deadline for receipt of Type A proposals is Friday, March 8, 2013.
The last sentence of the abstract must state the total amount of
computer time in Jpsi-equivalent core-hours for clusters, GPU-clusters
in GPU-hours, and in BG/Q hours or BG/P hours for those
machines. Proposals lacking this information will be returned without
review (but will be reviewed if the corrected proposal is returned
quickly and without other changes).
The body of the proposal should contain the following information, if
possible in the order below:
1) The physics goals of the calculation.
2) The computational strategy, including such details as gauge and
fermionic actions, parameters, computational methods.
3) The software used, including a description of the main algorithms
and the code base employed. If you use USQCD software, it is not
necessary to document performance in the proposal. If you use your
own code base, then the proposal should provide enough information to
show that it performs efficiently on its target platform(s).
Information on portability is welcome, but not mandatory. As feedback
for the software development team, proposals may include an
explanation of deficiencies of the USQCD software for carrying out the
proposed work.
4) The amount of resources requested in Jpsi-equivalent core-hours or
GPU hours. Here one should also state which machine is most desirable
and why, and whether it is feasible or desirable to run some parts of
the proposed work on one machine, and other parts on another. If
relevant, proposals of Type A should indicate longer-term computing
needs here.
The Scientific Program Committee will use the following table to convert:
1 J/psi core-hour = 1 Jpsi core-hour
1 Ds core-hour = 1.33 Jpsi core-hour
1 9q core-hour = 2.2 Jpsi core-hour
1 10q core-hour = 2.3 Jpsi core-hour
1 12s core-hour = 2.3 Jpsi core-hour
1 BG/P core-hour = 0.54 Jpsi core-hour
1 XK7(cpu) core-hour = 0.25 Jpsi core-hour (*)
1 XK7(GPU) core-hour = 3.5 Jpsi core-hour (**)
1 BG/Q core-hour = 1.64 Jpsi core-hour
1 C2050 GPU hour = 82 Jpsi equivalent core-hour
1 K20 GPU hour = 164 Jpsi equivalent core-hour
1 Phi MIC hour = 164 Jpsi equivalent core-hour
1 Jpsi core-hour = 1.22 GFlop/sec-hour
The above numbers are based on appropriate averages of asqtad, DWF
fermion inverters, and Clover inverters. In the case of XK7
performance is based on a Clover inverter run on the CPUs at
leadership scale, (*) but getting charged for the idle GPUs, and (**)
is running only on the GPUs. The conversion of GPU to Jpsi is based on
the average of application performance on user jobs across all GPU
systems at FNAL and JLab (including gamer as well as non-gamer cards).
See http://lqcd.fnal.gov/performance.html for details.
The total request(s) on clusters and GPUs should also be specified in
the last sentence of the proposal's abstract (see above).
In addition to CPU, proposals must specify how much mass storage is
needed. The resources section of the proposal should state how much
existing storage is in use, and how much new storage is needed, for
disk and tape, in Tbytes. In addition, please also restate the
storage request in Jpsi-equivalent core-hours, using the following
conversion factor, which reflect the current replacement costs for
disk storage and tapes:
1 Tbyte disk = 20 K Jpsi-equivalent core-hour
1 Tbyte tape = 3 K Jpsi-equivalent core-hour
Projects using disk storage will be charged 25% of these costs every
three months. Projects will be charged for tape usage when a file is
written at the full cost of tape storage; when tape files are deleted,
they will receive a 40% refund of the charge.
Proposals should discuss whether these files will be used by one, a
few, or several project(s). The cost for files (e.g., gauge
configurations) that are used by several projects will borne by USQCD
and not a specific physics project. The charge for files used by a
single project will be deducted from the computing allocation:
projects are thus encouraged to figure out whether it is more
cost-effective to store or re-compute a file. If a few (2-3) projects
share a file, they will share the charge.
5) If relevant, what data will be made available to the entire
Collaboration, and the schedule for sharing it.
6) What calculations the investigators would like to perform in an
"exclusive manner" (see above in the section on policy directives),
and for how long they would like to reserve to themselves this
exclusive right.
iii) Procedure for the awards.
The Scientific Program Committee will receive proposals until the
deadline of Friday, March 8, 2013. Proposals not stating the total
request in the last sentence of the abstract will be returned without
review (but will be reviewed if the corrected proposal is returned
quickly and without other changes).
Proposals that are considered meritorious and conforming to the goals
of the Collaboration will be posted on the web at
http://www.usqcd.org/, in the Collaboration's password-protected area.
Proposals recommended for awards in previous years can be found there
too.
The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) will make a preliminary
assessment of the proposals. On April 5, 2013, the SPC will send a
report to the proponents raising any concerns about the proposal.
The proposals will be presented and discussed at the All Hands'
Meeting, April 19-20, 2013, at BNL; see however,
---- section (iv) for special treatment of INCITE proposals---
Following the All Hands' Meeting the SPC will determine a set of
recommendations on the awards. The quality of the initial proposal,
the proponents' response to concerns raised in the written report, and
the views of the Collaboration expressed at the All Hands' Meeting
will all influence the outcome. The SPC will send its recommendations
to the Executive Committee shortly after the All Hands' Meeting, and
inform the proponents once the recommendations have been accepted by
the Executive Committee. The successful proposals and the size of
their awards will be posted on the web.
The new USQCD allocations will commence July 1, 2013.
Scientific publications describing calculations carried out with these
awards should acknowledge the use of USQCD resources, by including the
following sentence in the Acknowledgments:
"Computations for this work were carried out in part on facilities of
the USQCD Collaboration, which are funded by the Office of Science of
the U.S. Department of Energy."
Projects whose sole source of computing is USQCD should omit the
phrase "in part".
iv) INCITE award CY2013/2014 and zero priority time at Argonne
Since 2007, USQCD policy has been to apply as a Collaboration for time
on the "leadership-class" computers, installed at Argonne and Oak
Ridge National Laboratories, and allocated through the DOE's INCITE
Program (see http://hpc.science.doe.gov/). The first successful
three-year INCITE grant period ended 12/2010. A new three-year grant
proposal has been successful and received funding in CY2011. CY2013 is
the last year of this award.
For CY2013 USQCD was awarded 40 M BG/P core-hours and 250 M BG/Q
core-hours on the BG/P and BG/Q, respectively at Argonne, and 140 M
XK7 core-hours on the Cray XK7 at Oak Ridge. A new proposal will be
submitted for CY2014, and we anticipate receiving a similar
allocation.
In accordance with observed usage patterns, we will distribute the
entire regular INCITE at ANL that is available on 01/14. However, we
expect this time to be consumed quickly - in the first half of the
year. Thus, there is no regular INCITE time at ANL available later in
the year. Similarly, we will distribute the entire regular INCITE time
at ORNL available on 01/14 and expect it to be consumed in the first
half of the year.
In addition we expect to receive in CY2013 and CY2014 "zero priority
time" on the BG/Q at Argonne as well as in CY2013 on the BG/P. Based
upon previous usage and availability, we will distribute zero priority
time starting 07/2013 and ending in 06/2014. As the total amount of
zero-priority time is not realiably estimated at this time, we will
only assign percentages of zero-priority usage. We note that in the
past years about 100M BG/P core-hours of zero-priority time have been
consumed per year. The SPC may readjust these percentage allocations
based upon observed usage. The Oak Ridge facility does not provide a
zero-priority queue.
The usage of the INCITE allocations should be monitored by all PIs of
INCITE projects on the USQCD WEB-page:
http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~osborn/usqcd-spc/2012-13.html
v) USQCD computing resources.
The Scientific Program Committee will allocate 7200 hours/year to Type
A and Type B proposals. Of the 8766 hours in an average year the
facilities are supposed to provide 8000 hours of uptime. We then
reserve 400 hours (i.e., 5%) for each host laboratory's own use, and
another 400 hours for Type C proposals and contingencies.
==================================
At BNL:
60% of a 1024 node BG/Q rack
16 cores/node, up to 4 threads per core
16 GB memory/node
10% of a BNL rack with time donated to USQCD.
50% of a rack owned by USQCD.
total: 7200*1024*16*0.60 = 70.8 M BG/Q core-hours
The front-end will have more than 100 TBytes of disk space. No
tape access is available.
==================================
At FNAL:
820 node cluster ("J/Psi")
Only available for 2nd half CY2013
Quad-core, dual-socket 2.1 GHz Opteron nodes
8 cores per node
8 GB memory/node
88 GB local scratch disk/node
total: 3600*820*8*1 = 23.6 M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
421 node cluster ("Ds")
Eight-core, dual-socket 2.0 GHz AMD Opteron nodes
32 cores per node
64 GB memory/node
1 Ds core-hour = 1.33 Jpsi-equivalent core-hour
total: 7200*421*32*1.33 = 129 M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
170 node cluster (FY13 purchase, name TBD)
Eight-core, quad-socket 2.0 GHz Intel (Sandy Bridge) nodes
16 cores per node
32 GB memory/node
1 core-hour = 2.44 JPsi-equivalent core-hours
total: 7200*170*16*2.44 = 47.8 M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
76 node GPU cluster ("Dsg")
Quad-core, dual-socket Intel E5630 nodes
48 GB memory/node
2 GPUs NVIDIA M2050 (Fermi Tesla) per node
(152 total GPUs available)
GPU memory (ECC on) 2.7 GB / GPU
total: 7200*152 = 1094 K GPU-hours
These clusters will share about 800 TBytes of disk space in Lustre
file systems. Tape access is also available.
For further information see http://www.usqcd.org/fnal/
==================================
At JLAB:
320 node cluster ("9q")
Quad-core, dual-processor 2.4 GHz Intel Nehalem nodes
8 cores per node
24 GB memory/node, QDR IB fabric in partitions of up to 128 nodes
1 9q core-hour = 2.2 Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
total: 7200*320*8*2.2 = 40.5 M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
192 node cluster ("10q")
Quad-core, dual-processor 2.53 GHz Intel Westmere nodes
8 cores per node
24 GB memory/node, QDR IB fabric in partitions of 32 nodes
1 10q core-hour = 2.3 Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
total: 7200*192*8*2.3 = 25.4 M Jpsi-equivalent core-hours
276 node cluster ("12s")
Eight-core, dual processor Intel Sandy Bridge nodes
16 cores per node
32 GB memory/node
QDR network card, with full bi-sectional bandwidth network fabric
1 12s core-hour = 2.3 Jpsi cores
total: 7200*276*16*2.3 = 73.1 M Jpsi-equivalent core hours
146 node GPU cluster at JLab ("9g", "10g", "12k")
35 nodes with 4 NVIDIA C2050 (Fermi Tesla) GPUs
[Shown are the performance rates for GPUs in equivalent C2050 units.
Gamer card performance is generally higher, however, no ECC]
28 nodes with 4 GT-285 (Before-Fermi) GPUs (1 GT-285 = 0.75 C2050)
33 nodes with 4 GTX-480 (Fermi gamer) GPUs (1 GTX-480 = 1.55 C2050)
26 nodes with 4 GTX-580 (Fermi gamer) GPUs (1 GTX-580 = 1.70 C2050)
42 nodes with 4 NVIDIA K20m (Kepler Tesla) GPUs (1 K20m = 2 C2050)
(656 total GPUs available: in C2050 units -> 941 GPUs total)
total: 7200*941 = 6.7 M GPU hours
12 node MIC cluster at JLab ("12m")
12 node cluster equipped with 4 Intel Xeon Phi 5110P MICs
(48 total MICs available)
total: 7200*48 = 345 K MIC hours
For further information see also http://lqcd.jlab.org . Machine
descriptions can be found at
https://wiki.jlab.org/cc/external/wiki/index.php/New_Users_Start_Here
At JLAB, the systems will have access to about 800 TBytes of disk
space. Tape access is also available.
==============================================================
Resource estimates
Based upon the performance conversions used above, the total resources
available in this call are shown below. The INCITE time is based on an
estimated allocation for CY2014 and does not include time from CY2013.
BG/Q (BNL): 116 M Jpsi -> 17 TF-yr
Clusters (FNAL): 200 M Jpsi -> 30 TF-yr
Clusters (JLab): 139 M Jpsi -> 21 TF-yr
Fermi GPUs (FNAL): 90 M Jpsi -> 14 TF-yr
Fermi GPUs (JLab): 556 M Jpsi -> 85 TF-yr
Intel MIC (JLab): 56 M Jpsi -> 8 TF-yr
Total (USQCD): 1157 M Jpsi -> 175 TF-yr
OLCF (GPU): 490 M Jpsi -> 75 TF-yr
ALCF: 410 M Jpsi -> 62 TF-yr
Total (INCITE): 900 M Jpsi -> 137 TF-yr
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