Progress towards a National Collaboratory

Stu Loken

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

The Context

• DOE DOE has initiated a program of Technology R&D and Testbeds that is intended to change the way the Department does collaborative experiments and computation.

The Components

• A Toolkit for Advanced Computational Testing and Simulation (ACTS)

• Collaboratory Technology Research and Development

• Collaboratory Pilot Projects

• Computational Grand Challenges

Collaboratory R&D

• Workplan developed in series of workshops

• Focus of developing new capabilities and enhancing existing tools

• Close interactions with Pilot projects and other users

• Plan for support as tools mature

Collaboratory R&D Projects

• Shared Virtual Reality

• Software Infrastructure

• Collaboration Management

• Security Infrastructure

• Electronic Notebooks

• Floor Control

• Quality of Service

R&D Progress

• All of the R&D Projects have made significant progress in the past year

• Tools are now being deployed into Pilot projects and into other programs

• A repository has been established at LBNL to distribute emerging tools

Video Conferencing

• Work continues on MBone Tools developed at LBL

• New Conference Controller enables remote control of conference tools and cameras

• Other tools being used for specific projects– NetMeeting– PictureTalk– Streaming JPEG– CUSeeMe

Floor Management

• Provide Floor Control and Mediation for MBone conferencing tools

• Plug into existing protocol support

• Two coordination models– Moderated meeting– Consensus meeting

Information or Software

• DOE2000.lbl.gov

• www.microsoft.com/NetMeeting

• www.es.net

• www.picturetalk.com

Integration Framework

• Produce the distributed computing architecture required to support development of scientific laboratories

• Infrastructure will include common communication library which includes multicast and unicast with various reliability levels

• Group is preparing an Architecture Document to promote standards

Objectives• Facilitate development and interoperability of

collaboratory components by providing:– Convenient access to unicast and multicast messaging– Common communication API for unicast and multicast

communication– Reliable multicast communication– CORBA evaluation and integration– Directory services– Integration of security– Access from multiple languages (Java, C++ and C)

URL

• Main CIF homepagehttp://www.mcs.anl.gov/cif

(communication API description available)

Security Goals

• Development and demonstration of a security architecture that supports widely distributed applications AND access rights management by a widely distributed stakeholder community

• Fostering the development of a DOE Laboratory public-key infrastructure to enable practical use of the distributed security architecture

• Integration of the security architecture into several application domains

Security Architecture

• Distributed security architectures that are flexible, effective and easily deployed, administered and used for:– Authentication– Authorization– Access control– Confidentiality– Infrastructure protection– Distributed enterprise

Quality of Service

• Deploy Differentiated Services on selected ESnet links to support collaborative work

• Implement a Bandwidth Broker to provide sustained bandwidth to collaborative or distributed application

• Link to authentication architecture

Recent Accomplishments

• Design and implementation of bandwidth broker with authentication

• Interaction with IETF to establish standard

• Demonstrated capability with Cisco routers on ANL-LBNL link

• Will be deployed on ESnet and on I2

Collaboration Tools Taxonomy

• Email• News group• Papers• Mail• Electronic Notebook

• Telephone• Video Conference• Chat/White board• Shared authoring &

applications• Shared VR space• Instrument control

Real Time Information ExchangePersistent Information

Legal andRecordsrequirements

Notebook is a chronological record of ideas, data and events.

Motivation

• can be shared by remote collaborators (WWW access)

• always available for input or reading (can’t be “lost”)

• can contain rich media types (text, images, files, 3D structures, voice, animations, video, ...)

• can take input directly from computers (instrument or editors)

• easy transfer of information from one notebook to another

• simplified notarization process (over the Web)

• allows querying/ searching (complex query possible)

• can include hyperlinks to other data and references

Many advantages of using Electronic Notebook

Project Goals

• Design a common (open) Notebook Architecture– extensible as technology advances

– interoperable with other notebook viewers

– customizable for unique inputs of a given project

• Develop prototype implementations– make them available to DOE collaboratories

– general research community

– education

– industry

Notebook Engine

Plug-ins storageinterface

Notebook Architecture Design

Storageimplementation dependent

storage object

Notebook Client

(Web Browser based)

–familiar interface

–widely used and available

–existing standard

–cross-platform

–lots of existing software

Notebook Object

Common Architecture

Notebook Client Notebook Engine

Advanced Features

HTTPJAVA

Advanced Features

DataAcquisitionSystems

•Text•Images•Equations•Sketches•Data Type N•...

Input Tools

Editor API

mcast

ODB

OPM

Files

Data Storage Interface

Why do you care?

• Mechanism for managing distributed projects

• More general than simple web server

• Links being developed with CVS

• Will permit integration of test suite results with version control

For Further Information

http://www.epm.ornl.gov/enote/DOE2000 Electronic Notebook Website

Demonstration notebooks, Prototype EN Software for Unix and Windows,

Disk distribution at SC’98 in Nov.

Follow the links to:

Pilots

• Designed to test emerging technology and give feedback to technology developers

• Major Projects:– Diesel Combustion Collaboration– Materials Microcharacterization Collaboratory

• Some other efforts are going ahead with other (limited) funds

Diesel Collaboratory

• Focus on next generation of engines which must meet very tight emissions limits

• Collaborative computation as well as experiments to validate models

• Strong connection to industry, labs and university

Diesel Collaboratory Features

• Shared Combustion Models

• Computational Steering

• Library of Combustion Images

• Video Conferencing

• Electronic Notebooks

Diesel Collaboratory Issues

• Security especially for proprietary data

• Infrastructure at industrial partners

• Concerns about connections to Internet

Materials Collaboratory Features

• Common interface to instruments at all sites

• Remote control of instruments

• In-situ experiments using computer control

• Electronic notebooks

• Video conferencing

Materials Collaboratory Issues

• Security to protect instruments

• Some concern with proprietary data

• Avoiding “least common denominator” for instrument features

• Diversity of platforms

• Macintosh legacy

Observations

• Pilots must use a mix of commercial software and custom applications

• None of the tools is a perfect fit to needs

• Collaboratory tools are not well integrated with each other or with other packages already in use

Signs of Progress

• Despite problems and rough edges, the tools are being used

• Industry partners do seem to be joining in the collaborations although less quickly than university and lab scientists

• Other collaboratory projects are starting even with absence of new DOE funding

DOE2000 Web site

www.mcs.anl.gov/DOE2000