Tour of the National
Computational Infrastructure
On the last day of Information
Awareness month (31 May), a number of us (both librarians and IT professionals)
toured the National
Computational Infrastructure (NCI) centre on the Australian National
University Campus. It was a fitting finale to the end of this month that
had successfully promoted an increased awareness of information
management amongst both practioneers and the wider community.
Professor Lindsay Botten kindly
gave up his Friday afternoon to give us a very informative tour of the ‘super-computer’
that crunches massive data (140 petaflops at peak performance) on topics
such as climate change and medical research. Partners drawn from the
university and government sector work together with massive data assets to
visualise and model data in areas of real significance to Australia (and
beyond: national water management and earth system science being another two
areas. At the moment, Professor Botten advised the major contribution that
research from NCI is making towards analysing the patterns of the Earth’s
energy distribution in the Southern ocean. Combining this research with other
analysis being undertaken in the area of climate-science, the research work and
analysis will make a significant contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on Climate
Change due later this year.
The architecture of the building
looks very 21st century – part of this because it encompasses
several elements of modern super-computing. Personally I found it very exciting
to actually learn how the entire closed system works. Massive cooling
mechanisms are in place as the super computer generates great heat. We could
feel the heat of the systems walking through the centre of the installation. The
cooling plant reminded me of the pictures of the Snowy Mountain
hydroelectric stations – it was on a larger scale than you would think! I drew
the analogy of the Star Trek movie centred around the spaceship of the aliens ‘the
Borg’ when we entered the computer itself: I felt I had become part
of ‘the colony’. Several others were thinking of Skynet in the Terminator
series. While you may have one or two processor cores in your computer at home
or work, the NCI has 57,500! A few gigabytes of memory may allow your computer
to do enough processing – the NCI has 160 terabytes – and 10 petabytes of disk. As well as the storage, a lot of data is
cycled onto tape and backed up as well, allowing the computer to focus on
current tasks. While these figures sound like it will be able to cope forever,
the pace of change is a major challenge – the computer will need substantial
updating in three or four years to meet the rapid pace of change we are in the
midst of! It was fascinating to see how far the technology has progressed and
was a real privilege to have a look at such a facility in Canberra.
There was no doubt in the minds of
anyone who participated that concepts being bandied about in the press (such as
“Big Data”) are already upon us – in an almost mind-blowing way. And the NCI is
an example of partnerships coming together to help Australia stay at the
forefront and make a big contribution in high-impact research. Thanks to
Professor Botten for giving us the
guided tour.
Here is some background for the perplexed amongst us:
The National Computational
Infrastructure, Australia’s national high-end computing service, is an
initiative of the Australian Government, hosted by the Australian National
University. NCI’s mission, to foster ambitious and aspirational research
objectives, and to enable their realisation through world-class high-end
computing services. The cutting-edge infrastructure and internationally
renowned expert support allow this, the only supercomputer of Australia, to be
an integral part of world-best research. Professor Brian Schmidt (Winner of the
Nobel Prize for Physics 2011) is undertaking a mapping project that could
change understanding of astronomy in the near-future!
NCI’s advanced computing infrastructure, comprising a petascale HPC system, a
large-scale compute cloud (primarily for data-intensive services), and
multi-petabyte high-performance storage, is funded through programs of the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate
Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, while its operations are
sustained through the substantial co-investment by a number of partner
organisations including ANU, CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
Geoscience Australia, a number of Australia’s research-intensive universities,
and the Australian Research Council.
If you’re interested in the NCI and
what they are up to, be sure to look at their website http://nci.org.au/ for more background and
information.
Karna O'Dea and Sean Wright
