IBTA Blog

I’ve heard there were more than 10,000 people in New Orleans this week for the SC10 conference and from what I saw on the show floor, in sessions and in the restaurants around the French Quarter, I believe it. The SCinet team has had several tiring yet productive days ensuring the network ran smoothly for the more than 342 exhibitors at the show.

One very popular demo was the real time 3D flight simulator (see photo below) that was displayed in multiple booths at the show. The flight simulator provided a virtual high-resolution rendering of Salt Lake City, Utah, from the air running over SCinet’s high speed, low latency InfiniBand/RDMA network.

Real time 3D flight simulator

This year, SCinet introduced the SCinet Research Sandbox. Sandbox participants were able to utilize the network infrastructure to demonstrate 100G networks for a wide variety of applications, including petascale computing, next-generation approaches to wide area file transfer, security analysis tools, and data-intensive computing.

This is the tenth Supercomputing show I’ve attended and I’ve made a few observations. Years ago, I used to see a lot of proprietary processors, interconnects, and storage. Now we’re seeing much more standardization around technologies such as InfiniBand. In addition, there’s also been a lot of interest this year around 100G connectivity and the need for higher faster data rates.

Several members of the SCinet team. Thank you to all of the volunteers who helped make SCinet a success this week!

The first couple of shows I attended were very scientific and academic in nature. Now as I walk the show floor, it’s exciting to see more commercial HPC applications for financial services, automotive/aviation, and oil & gas.

I had a great time in New Orleans, and I look forward to my next ten SC conferences. See you next year at SC11 in Seattle, WA!

Eric Dube

SCinet/InfiniBand Co-Chair

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Today is Saturday, November 13, and sessions for SC10 have begun. We’re in the home stretch to get SCinet installed. We’ve been working feverishly to get everything running before the start of the conference. In addition, the network demonstrations should all be live in time for the Exhibition Press Tour on Monday night from 6-7 pm.

I’ve included more photos to show you the network in progress. If you’re going to New Orleans and have any questions about SCinet, be sure to stop by our help desk.

All the SCinet DNOCs located throughout the show floor are now finished and ready to go.

The show floor is busy as ever and exhibitor booth construction is well underway.

SCinet's main NOC network equipment racks provide connectivity for network subscribers to the world's fastest network.

All the power distribution units needed to supply power to all the network equipment in the SCinet main NOC.

SCinet has more than 100 volunteers working behind the scenes to bring up the world’s fastest network. Planning began more than a year ago and all of our hard work is about to pay off as we connect SC10 exhibitors and attendees to leading research and commercial networks around the world, including the Department of Energy’s ESnet, Internet2, National LambdaRail and LONI (Louisiana Optical Network Initiative).

I will blog again as the show gets rolling and provide updates on our demos in action.

See you soon!

Eric Dube

SCinet/InfiniBand Co-Chair

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SCinet Network Operations Center (NOC) stage

SCinet Network Operations Center (NOC) stage

For those heading to New Orleans for the SC10 conference, the weather this week is upper 70s and clear - although the SCinet team hasn’t had much of a chance to soak up the sun. We’re busy building the world’s fastest network - to be up and running this Sunday, November 14, for one week only. It’s going to be a busy couple of days… let me give you an update on progress to date.

The main SCinet Network Operations Center (NOC) stage is in the process of being built. I’ve included a photo of the convention center and our initial framing, followed by a picture after the power and aerial fiber cable drops have been installed.

Our SCinet team includes volunteers from educational institutions, high performance computing centers, network equipment vendors, U.S. national laboratories, research institutions, and research networks and telecommunication carriers that work together to design and deliver the SCinet infrastructure.

The picture below shows SCinet team members Mary Ellen Dube and Parks Fields receiving the aerial fiber cables that are being lowered from the catwalks scattered throughout the convention center floor.

Aerial fiber cables being lowered from catwalks

Below is a photo of Cary Whitney (my fellow SCinet/InfiniBand Co-Chair) and Parks Fields testing aerial InfiniBand active optical cables going between the distributed/remote NOC.

Cary Whitney and Parks Fields

Aerial InfiniBand active optical cables

I’ve also included a picture of myself and team member DA Fye running a lift to install the aerial fiber cables going between the main NOC and distributed/remote NOCs throughout the show floor. Next to that is a photo of some of the many InfiniBand active optical cables going to the main SCinet NOC.

Running a lift with DA Fye

InfiniBand active optical cables going to the main SCinet NOC

This year’s SC10 exhibitors and attendees are anticipated to push SCinet’s capacity and capabilities to the extreme. I’ll keep updating this blog to show you how we’re preparing for the show and expected demands on the network.

Eric Dube

SCinet/InfiniBand Co-Chair

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Greetings InfiniBand Community,

As many of you know, every fall before Supercomputing, over 100 volunteers - including scientists, engineers, and students - come together to build the world’s fastest network: SCinet. This year, over 168 miles of fiber will be used to form the data backbone. The network takes months to build and is only active during the SC10 conference. As a member of the SCinet team, I’d like to use this blog on the InfiniBand Trade Association’s web site to give you an inside look at network as it’s being built from the ground up.

This year, SCinet includes a 100 Gbps circuit alongside other infrastructure capable of delivering 260 gigabits per second of aggregate data bandwidth for conference attendees and exhibitors - that’s enough data to allow the entire collection of books at the Library of Congress to be transferred in well under a minute. However, my main focus will be on building out SCinet’s InfiniBand network in support of distributed HPC applications demonstrations.

For SC10, the InfiniBand fabric will consist of Quad Data Rate (QDR) 40, 80, and 120-gigabit per second (Gbps) circuits linking together various organizations and vendors with high-speed 120Gbps circuits providing backbone connectivity throughout the SCinet InfiniBand switching infrastructure.

Here are some of the InfiniBand network specifics that we have planned for SC10:

• 12X InfiniBand QDR (120Gbps) connectivity throughout the entire backbone network
• 12 SCinet InfiniBand Network Participants
• Approximately 11 Equipment and Software Vendors working together to provide all the resources to build the IB network
• Approximately 23 InfiniBand Switches will be used for all the connections to the IB network
• Approximately 5.39 miles (8.67 km) worth of fiber cable will be used to build the IB network

The photos on this page show all the IB cabling that we need to sort through and label prior to installation and the numerous SCinet Network Operations Center (NOC) systems and distributed/remote NOC (dNOC) equipment racks getting installed and configured.

In future blog posts, I’ll update you on the status of the SCinet installation and provide more details on the InfiniBand demonstrations that you’ll be able to see at the show, including a flight simulator in 3D and Remote Desktop over InfiniBand (RDI).

Stay tuned!

Eric Dube

SCinet/InfiniBand Co-Chair

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