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Pacific Wave Supports Big-Data Demonstrations at Supercomputing 2024 Conference

Jonah Keough

This year at the upcoming Supercomputing 2024 (SC24) conference, Pacific Wave infrastructure will be supporting numerous Network Research Exhibitions (NREs) showcasing methods to improve and accelerate international scientific discovery, collaboration, and analysis.

As big data gets ever bigger, researchers around the world have learned that managing these data flows is more than a matter of building bigger and bigger pipes. The challenges of managing the network and scientific workflows, as well as integrating globally distributed resources into a flexible infrastructure that meets the needs of many disciplines, have grown equally in pace with the data rates.

The NREs taking place at the annual Supercomputing conference seek to address these challenges so that scientific discovery continues and researchers are empowered by the data bounty they have created rather than being overcome by it.

Integrating International Compute, Storage, and Visualization Resources, and More

The North America Research and Education Exchange (NA-REX) is a collaboration to improve research and education networking in North America, and by extension globally, enabled by participation in open international Research and Education (R&E) exchange points and national and regional R&E networks. The collaboration is designed specifically to support R&E communities to accelerate science research, especially multi-domain science, data-intensive science, and research testbeds by developing an international infrastructure based on 400 Gbps end-to-end paths interconnecting major open exchange points. Other service components include open exchange Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs), and AutoGOLE/NSI dynamic provisioning.

The NA-REX infrastructure, along with Pacific Wave, StarLight in Chicago, and other resources, will support several NREs, including the Global Research Platform (GRP). The GRP will demonstrate techniques that dynamically create powerful, distributed, integrated systems of computers, data storage, visualization displays, and instruments at collaborating sites around the globe, making it easier for researchers to share resources, innovations, information, and knowledge. NA-REX itself will also conduct its own multi-booth international demonstrations using 400 Gbps paths along Pacific Wave, StarLight, and Internet2’s WIX to the SC24 venue in Atlanta.

Supporting Near-Terabit International Data Transfers and Application Use

Pacific Wave, as part of the APOnet collaboration, is supporting NICT and NII experiments such as demonstrating 800 Gbps data-transfer from Japan to the United States using Massively Multi-Connect File Transfer Protocol (MMCFTP), as well as demonstrating Tbps-scale Network Layer Anonymous Communication on Programmable Switches which offers improved security and reduces the amount of equipment required at each endpoint.

Another demo by Osaka University in Japan seeks to improve the memory-to-disk performance which may enhance the ability of researchers to analyze research data quickly. Five of the ten pathways across the Pacific used for these demonstrations will be facilitated by Pacific Wave and other collaborating international networks.

Improving Management of Large-Scale Network-Enabled Scientific Workflows

The SciTags initiative is an open international collaboration developing practical networking capabilities for High Energy Physics (HEP) research using National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), including the LHCOPN and LHCOne. SciTags is being developed to provide high-fidelity visibility into how science flows utilize network resources end-to-end, allowing R&E networks to better understand resource utilization and manage large-scale scientific workflows.

The demonstration will showcase the management of internationally distributed resources at a variety of Open Exchange Points over 400 Gbps paths provided by Pacific Wave, StarLight, CANARIE, the Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), and NA-REX.

Dynamic Service Provisioning for Petabyte Data Exchanges

The Global Network Architecture Group (GNA-G) AutoGOLE/SENSE working group will also be presenting several demonstrations and experiments to showcase the global persistent multi-resource infrastructure based on the integration of the AutoGOLE and Software-defined network for End-to-end Networked Science at Exascale (SENSE) functions.

One SC24 demonstration will be showing workflows which include the resources in connected external facilities. Another demonstration will show data movement systems that can interact with the network to optimize their operations.

Integrating Internal and External Distributed Resources

Another set of demonstrations will show the FABRIC (Adaptive Programmable Research Infrastructure for Computer Science and Science Applications) infrastructure in operation.  FABRIC is an international infrastructure that enables cutting-edge experimentation and research at scale in the areas of networking, cybersecurity, distributed computing, storage, virtual reality, 5G, machine learning, and science applications.

The multi-booth FABRIC demonstrations for SC24 will highlight the many methods available for connections to external resources such as edge/site resources and other networks. This includes connections to multiple National Research Platform (NRP) sites and other R&E Networks, showcasing the FABRIC Research Cyberinfrastructure and the ease with which other resources and sites can be integrated.

Visit Pacific Wave at Booth 811

Data rates have grown exponentially since the early days of networked science and show no signs of stopping. These demonstrations and more will be supported by Pacific Wave during Supercomputing 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia, November 18-21, and thanks to them, visitors to the show floor can see how network researchers are preventing the challenges of managing this data from growing at the same rate.

If you’d like to learn more about Pacific Wave or the NREs that Pacific Wave will be supporting at SC24, please visit Booth 811.  You can also find a list of all accepted NREs at the SC24 website.