Computation continuous to grow across all scientific disciplines and research education. Along with computationally-driven research, vast amounts of data are originating from various sources such as particle colliders (e.g. Large Hadron Collider), environmental sensors, social media and transportation systems, etc. To handle this "Data Tsunami", Big-Data analysis is becoming pervasive across both academia and industry. To harness the power of these vast datasets and expedite scientific discovery through computation and analysis, institutions need adequate resources to respond to emerging opportunities. This public Minority-Serving Institution in the heart of the Chicago area, is the first to use an open access cluster in the region. Thus SABER should have a significant positive impact on research training for underrepresented groups. The institution?s unique approach to utilizing existing technologies should set the converging path for Big Data and HPC clusters nationally. SABER will greatly encourage Big Data research across various scientific disciplines such as engineering, natural sciences, urban planning, economics, manufacturing, and others at institutions across Chicago region. Advances made in algorithm development on parallel architectures and data mining techniques resulting from this acquisition should initiate transformative advances for all other types of computational research at the national level.
This project, acquiring a hybrid HPC (High Performance Computing) and Big-Data cluster, aims to support more than 25 research projects from 9 colleges at UIC and IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) in a broad range of computational disciplines such as fluid dynamics, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, bioengineering, visualization, earth and environmental sciences, and material sciences. This heterogeneous cluster, SABER (Shared Analytics and Big-data Enterprise Resource) named SABER, has diskless nodes allowing on-demand research cloud provisioning services, fat local storage nodes for MapReduce/Big-Data analysis, petascale high capacity fast-scratch storage and large memory nodes for High Throughput Computing, all connected over 56Gbps FDR Infiniband. SABER complements UIC's existing private condo (for investors only) cluster, EXTREME, by bridging the gap between available infrastructure and desired capabilities, such as Big Data analysis, dual operating systems capability and a fee-for-service model. SABER will be UIC's and IIT's first open access cluster (this instrument does not currently exist at either institution), which will also connect to Internet2 and Pacific Research Platform (PRP) over 100Gbps, thus facilitating multi-site and multi-investigator research involving ultra-large datasets. The primary use of SABER will not be for research with disease-related goals. Traditionally silo clusters have been created for HPC and Big Data type workloads. The SABER cluster will employ novel technical advances made in the fast scratch Lustre environment by Intel to handle both HPC and Big Data workloads on the same hardware, thus leading to greater economies of scale. SABER connects to UIC's Electronic Visualization Laboratory over a high-speed 100Gbps channel to enable live visualization of real time computed data at remote locations. SABER?s shared storage architecture allows researchers and students to compute, analyze and visualize massive datasets without costly data transfers. In addition, researchers will be able to cloud provision Windows and Linux mini-clusters at run times that break the traditional environmental constraints of HPC Linux, to allow greater adoption.
