Grid Computing Training
Purpose
To extend training to principal parties involved with the grid project through a training session performed by United Devices employee(s). Training will focus on three areas:
- First will be the implementation and usage of BLAST with the grid project.
- Second will involve the porting and development of UF designed computational programs to the grid service.
- Lastly, tools for the educational purposes of the grid shall be developed to be used as a framework for a classroom environment aimed at UF students.
Schedule
Training will occur during the week of July 26th. The sessions will be scheduled as follows:
- Application Porting (Session 2): Monday and Tuesday (July 26th and 27th).
- Educational Material Development (Session 3): Wednesday and Thursday (July 28th and 29th)
- BLAST Training (Session 1): Friday (July 30th)
Training sessions are tentatively planned to be held in Building 105, Room 220.
Curriculum
Session 1
The first portion of the curriculum involves the possibility of implementing the BLAST application on the grid service. Topics covered will be the following:
- Planning the impact of the BLAST application on the current grid server
- Installation of the BLAST application on the grid server
- Formatting of data to be used with the grid enabled BLAST
- Database maintenance for BLAST computations
- End-user job submission and data retrieval
Session 2
UF developed computational programs will be the second focus of the training. An example program will be used during the training session to show the step-by-step procedure for porting an application to the grid service. While a single program will be used as an example, attendees will be able to use the knowledge gained in this training portion to port future applications not yet written to the grid service. Topics covered will be the following:
- Considerations to be used when coding the application for use on the grid
- Client types (linux, win32)
- Data splitting and merging
- Input data formatting and splitting for grid efficiency
- Uploading the application to the grid server for client distribution
- Methods for submission of jobs
- Methods for retrieval of output data
- Merging of output data into useable format
- End-user access to the application
Session 3
The final focus of the training will be concerned with developing educational materials for the grid service. These educational materials will be centered around undergraduate and graduate level courses where students have a rudimentary knowledge of computer programming. These materials will be developed in partnership between UF and UD employees during the session. Ideally, portions of code and the framework for accompanying documentation will be created. A single programming language will be used in the example code. Attendees will gain the knowledge to convert the example code to their programming language of choice. Code and documentation will be developed with the following considerations in mind
- Ease of conversion to multiple software languages
- Ability for students to "ignore the details of the grid" and focus on writing their software program with grid computations in mind.
- Code generated with specific locations for students to insert their computational code.
- Documentation explaining how grid systems break-up data, compute them, and merge them together into final results
- Formatting of input data.
- Databases internal and external to the grid service
- Command line inputs
- Simulations
- Retrieval of output data
