Vol. 54, Special Issue        February 2002

Computing

The Accelerated Strategic Computing Intiative Visual Interactive Environment for Weapons Simulations (VIEWS) team designed and built the world's highest-performance scientific-visualization facility -- the Bldg. 880 VIEWS Corridor. The facility has demonstrated rendering performance and display resolution far beyond any commercially available graphics-display combination. This capability is uniquely targeted toward visualization of terascale results of high-performance computing simulations supporting nuclear weapons engineering. Also, research into optimal meeting and review environments has resulted in an under-table projected display with high-resolution, high-brightness projectors, coupled to a high-end Sony HDTV camera to provide real-time motion image capture from a Zeiss Stemi microscope. (9200, 14100) Philip Heermann, pdheerm@sandia.gov

IDSL (Intrusion Detection System Laboratory) handles production network intrusion detection for the California site and provides a laboratory for intrusion detection and network countermeasures research. The IDSL team is credited with capturing and identifying a number of Internet attacks this year including the CodeRed worm. (8900) Barry Hess, hess@sandia.gov

Efficiently storing and moving hundreds of tera- bytes of information across networks through standard protocols remains a key challenge of the DOE/NNSA Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative. This capability was the focus of demonstrations by more than a dozen collaborating businesses and government research laboratories at the Supercomputing 2001 annual meeting. The demonstration showed that the next generation network and storage technology would allow researchers at national laboratories to remotely share complex 3-D rendering of massively complex calculations that pertain to the maintenance of US nuclear weapons. (8900) Helen Chen, hycsw@sandia.gov

The Zoltan library of data services was released on the external web (http://www.cs.sandia.gov/Zoltan) in January, providing a model for Sandia's open-source software distribution. Zoltan provides data services for parallel, dynamic, adaptive applications services, including parallel repartitioning, distributed directories, unstructured communication, and memory management. Zoltan's web-based release was a groundbreaking effort, increasing Sandia's visibility to funding agencies and the greater scientific community. (9200, 1300, 11700) Karen Devine, kddevin@sandia.gov

Sandia's Cplant cluster now ranks 30th on the Top500 list of the world's most powerful computers and is the world's largest and most productive self-made supercomputer. Its four distinct modes of operation -- open, development, restricted, and classified -- enable university collaboration and advanced software testing, as well as unclassified and classified scientific computations. Each operational mode has a dedicated cluster of up to 256 nodes, which is expandable to 1,792 nodes on demand. The entire runtime software, released as open source, has been downloaded more than 1,000 times. (9200, 9300) Neil Pundit, ndpundi@sandia.gov

Software development within the CIO organization now uses processes assessed as meeting CMM level 2 criteria. CMM, the Capability Maturity Model developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, is a standard that provides a framework in which software processes are developed and documented. The processes and resulting work products are described in the Software Information Life Cycle, an internal web document found at http://www-irn.sandia.gov/silc/. (9500) Paul Merillat, pdmeril@sandia.gov

The Simulation Enabled Product Realization Program (9900) completed the first year piloting a "Program Alignment" process with the NWSBU. The process engaged line management throughout the weapon engineering community with leaders in modeling and simulation capability development. The most critical needs of the Stockpile Lifetime Extension Programs and other weapon support activities were identified and resources adjusted to meet the needs. A major result of the alignment process is better alignment of the ASCI milestones with weapon needs. (2100, 8200,8900, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9900) Martha Ernest mjernes@sandia.gov

SIMBA (SImulation Manager and Builder for Analysts) is software that helps engineering analysts build complex hierarchical models for finite element simulations. A model of a weapons system is traditionally built by scaling, repositioning, reorienting, renumbering, and joining component and subsystem models. SIMBA records and manages the details of this process, allowing quick visualization at every step. The software can also diagnose and help correct problems that occur during model building. (8900) Paul Nielan, pen@sandia.gov Hacking cyberspace is an international pastime and Sandia is always an attractive target. Over the past year, significant hardening of the open network was accomplished. The goal was to make the open network and the telephone system as inaccessible to outsiders as the internal network, but facilitate an open, collaborative environment. World-class anti-virus software, a telephone firewall, restructuring to a default deny-and-specific-permit strategy, and aggressive instrumentation of network traffic significantly reduced our vulnerability. (9300, 8900) Mike Cahoon, RMC@sandia.gov Virtual Private Networking (VPN) extends the ability of Sandia's engineers, scientists, and administrators to do mission work while off-site. We created a technical and support infrastructure for Sandians to use specially configured government- owned computers for VPN connections to the Sandia Restricted Network. With broadband Internet access, VPN allows working essentially the same as through an on-site connection. The project was accelerated after Sept. 11 in case of further site closures. (9300, 9600, 8900) Charles Shirley, cshirle@sandia.gov

The Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI)/Distance and Distributed Computing (DisCom) Project successfully completed "with flying colors" ASCI's first tri-lab milepost. The Distributed Resource Management (DRM) project played a major role by developing and deploying the ASCI Grid. The ASCI Grid is the world's largest computational grid with the most processors (24,548) and highest compute capability (~19 TeraOps). Grid services enable both local and remote users to effectively use various ASCI resources from their desktops. For more information see: gridservices@sandia.gov. (6500, 9200, 9300) Kathie Hiebert-Dodd, klhiebe@sandia.gov

Last modified: February 28 , 2002

View Sandia news releases and fact sheets

Questions and Comments || Acknowledgment and Disclaimer