Global science relies on robust, interconnected components - computers, storage, networks and the software that ties them together - collectively called the scientific cyberinfrastructure (CI). Improvements to individual components are made at varying paces, often creating bottlenecks in the flow of information - the scientific workflow - and slowing down scientific discovery. FABRIC Across Borders (FAB) enables domain scientists and CI experts to jointly develop a more tightly integrated, flexible, intelligent, easily programmable workflow that takes advantage of rapid changes in technology to improve global science collaboration. FAB enables domain scientists to perform global, end-to-end experimentation of new CI workflow ideas on a platform with one of a kind capabilities. The project expands the NSF-funded FABRIC testbed to encompass four additional, International locations, creating an interconnected resource on which an initial set of scientists from High Energy Physics (HEP), Astronomy, Cosmology, Weather, Urban Science and Computer Science work with cyberinfrastructure experts to conduct cyberinfrastructure experiments. In addition to domain scientists, FAB collaborates in the area of Internet freedom and maintains strong partnerships with human rights groups, which serve to expand the results beyond domain sciences.
FABRIC nodes contain programmable networking hardware, storage, CPUs and GPUs, measurement devices and software in a single, integrated rack. FAB enables placement of four additional nodes in partner data centers in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Bristol and the particle physics lab CERN in Geneva and connects them via NSF-funded International networks, on which it’s possible to conduct experiments without impacting production science. FAB offers programmable peering with production networks and specialized testbeds, allowing experimenter topologies to be joined with production networks, vastly expanding the possibilities for the types of resources and users that can utilize the infrastructure. FAB creates new software services and tools for researchers at the facilities, and interfaces with existing and evolving data delivery services to efficiently move and process scientific data globally and test novel data analysis approaches that scale to massive volumes. Metrics of success are driven by the science experiments themselves: more efficient handling of both high energy physics data from CERN experiments to worldwide collaborators and Cosmic Microwave Background data collected in South America and the South Pole; successful proofs of concept for the sharing of Smart City sensor data for urban planning as well as the establishment of global, private 5G networks. All software associated with FAB will be open source and posted in a publicly available repository: https://github.com/fabric-testbed/
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
