---------------------------------------------------------------------- H H PPP CCC UK NATIONAL HPC SERVICE H H P P C C -------------------------- HHHHH PPP C x x provided by H H P C C xx EPCC and H H P CCC x x CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HPCx User Mailing 024 24 October 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings-- TERAGYROID: AN INTERCONTINENTAL GRID PROJECT The Project ----------- TeraGyroid is a project which will link the leading HPC centres in the UK and US in a Grid to perform the largest ever lattice-Boltzmann simulations, involving lattices of over one billion sites. Visualised output will be streamed to collaborating researchers at Access Grid nodes in various places in the UK and the US, who will be able to steer the computations in real time. This ambitious project will integrate a substantial part of the world's supercomputing power into a single resource. Participants will include both of the UK's centres at HPCx and CSAR (Manchester), and the US's TeraGrid machines at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, NCSA (Illinois) and San Diego Supercomputing Center. It demonstrates the commitment of HPCx and CSAR to UK participation at the world level in the development of the Grid and advanced computational science. Supercomputing exercise ----------------------- TeraGyroid's first major exercise will be conducted during the Supercomputing 2003 event (November 17 - 21). This will require us to dedicate the whole of HPCx and the CSAR Green system to TeraGyroid during Supercomputing, and for six preparatory sessions leading up to it. During these times HPCx and Green will not be generally available to users. The times we are planning at present are the following. Thursday 30th October: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time Tuesday 4th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time Thursday 6th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time Tuesday 11th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time Thursday 13th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time Saturday 15th November: 16.00 - 22.00 UK time Tuesday 18th November 24.00 - Thursday 21st November 24.00 UK time - Supercomputing exercise We will try to stick to these times, but as the work has to be coordinated with all the sites in the US it may be necessary to vary some of the later ones. Obviously this project will be inconvenient to some users, and we apologise for that in advance. However, we hope that users will agree that it is important for us to represent the UK in a project of such international significance. We have tried to reduce the impact by keeping these sessions to the minimum and by placing them mostly outside the working day. Supercomputing 2003: http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/ Scientific background --------------------- TeraGyroid is a high-end computing Grid project integrating UK and US TeraGrid resources to carry out grid-based lattice-Boltzmann simulations of defect dynamics in amphiphilic liquid crystals. An amphiphile is a chemical species whose molecules consist of a hydrophobic tail attached to a hydrophilic head. This dichotomy causes the molecules to self-assemble into complex morphologies when dispersed in solvents, binary immiscible fluid mixtures or melts. Some mesophases are liquid crystalline, with features intermediate between a liquid and a solid. The gyroid is one of these: ubiquitous in biological systems, it has important applications in membrane protein crystallisation, controlled drug release and biosensors. Being a mesophase, the gyroid exhibits weak crystallinity and the presence of defects, which play an important rôle in determining its mechanical properties. The scientific objective of the TeraGyroid project is to study defect pathways and dynamics in gyroid self-assembly via the largest set of lattice-Boltzmann (LB) simulations ever performed, involving lattices of over one billion sites. The LB model (LB3D) has an unrivalled ability to describe the dynamics and hydrodynamics of binary immiscible and ternary amphiphilic fluids. The TeraGyroid project couples cutting-edge grid technologies within the Reality Grid environment including high-performance computing, visualisation and computational steering capabilities to produce a major leap forward in soft condensed matter simulation. TeraGyroid is the result of an international collaboration linking the USA's TeraGrid and the UK's Level Two Grid, funded by NSF and EPSRC. Trans-Atlantic optical bandwidth is supported by British Telecommunications. Regards --John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Earlier mailings: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk/support/notices/index.html To be removed from the mailing list: log into your website account, go to the "Update" page, and click the "Opt out of user emails" field; then click "Commit update". -- John Fisher j.fisher@epcc.ed.ac.uk HPCx User Administration and Helpdesk HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk Helpdesk: support@hpcx.ac.uk Phone: +44 131 650 5029 Fax: +44 131 650 6555