Prototype of a NOAA Computational Grid

Dan Schaffer
Forecast Systems Lab, OAR

NOAA scientific research is supported by thousands of computers scattered throughout the laboratories ranging from individual workstations to large-scale clusters. Most of these resources are only available to local users. A lack of connectivity inhibits sharing between or even within labs. As a result, huge numbers of compute cycles go unused and opportunities are lost to increase the scale of scientific modeling. Meanwhile, advances in network backbone technologies and middleware offer a new opportunity to share these resources. Organizations such as NASA and NSF provide seamless, secure shared access to member computers via a computational grid constructed from these technologies. A computational grid is analogous to an electrical power grid in the sense that, once plugged in, a user theoretically has access to resources provided anywhere on the grid.

The Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) is leading an effort to setup a prototype NOAA computational grid using Globus middleware. From various funding sources including an FY ’03 NOAA HPCC grant, we have developed a rudimentary grid consisting of one Intel Linux machine located at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and several others situated at FSL. A version of the Weather Research and Forecast model has been coupled with the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) over this grid. One model runs at PMEL, the other at FSL and the boundary conditions are exchanged over the Abilene network connection between the two labs. Experiments show that the communication bandwidth and latency are such that it is quite feasible to execute this loosely coupled model over the grid. FSL has submitted a proposal for NOAA HPCC FY ’04 funding to expand the grid into a full prototype including clusters and individual nodes from PMEL, FSL and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).