SAP Project Procedures
NCSA has developed the following guidelines that are used in our collaborative efforts involving the scientific projects that embody the Strategic Applications Program (SAP):
Selecting an SAP Project
The procedure for selecting projects involves the following steps:
- The Strategic Applications Coordinator identifies a potential project for consideration for inclusion in the Strategic Applications Program. The initial identification of a potential project may come fron a variety of sources.
- Researchers interested in discussing potential projects are encouraged to contact the Strategic Applications Coordinator at app-coord@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
- The Coordinator and the potential PI prepare a brief description of the project in terms of its scientific objectives and computational characteristics. They also will prepare a statement of contributions from the PI and NCSA staff.
- The final decision on researchers selected for collaborations rests with the NCSA senior management.
The number of projects active at a given time will be subject to the constraints of available NCSA staff time.
Conducting an SAP Project
For each project selected as a Strategic Application, the Coordinator will appoint an NCSA staff member to be a Strategic Applications NCSA Project Lead. The first task of an NCSA Project Lead will be to work with interested researcher(s) to assist in the preparation of a document detailing the goals of the project, including a baseline for these goals. These details will expand upon the initial description prepared by the PI with the Coordinator in the project selection phase. This document will include a description of the potential benefit to a wider user community, and an estimate of the resources expected for the project. When appropriate, more NCSA staff can be assigned to a project, if expertise from multiple areas is needed.
The contributions of the NCSA Project Lead and other NCSA staff could be in one or more of the following areas:
- Porting the code to new, more powerful resources, such as NCSA's Linux clusters
- Improving single processor performance by addressing issues such as memory hierarchy, cache optimization
- Improving scaling behavior, for example, by attempting to overlap computation and communication, minimizing synchronization points, and reducing load imbalance
- Implementing more effective computational methods, possibly through the use of high-quality parallel scientific libraries
- Developing a grid application, e.g. using Globus middleware and/or Condor
- Using advanced visualization techniques for the results of a simulation
- Enabling applications to handle large data sets effectively, and streamlining I/O
Throughout the lifetime of the project, the NCSA Project Lead will communicate regularly with the PI and his/her team. This interaction will be crucial to the success of the project.
Completing an SAP Project
On completion of a project, the PI along with the NCSA Project Lead will prepare a final report. This report will incorporate information from the PI involved in the project, highlighting the benefits of the project and the PI's team's ability to continue on their own. Because the projects are conducted as collaborations, the PI and others on his/her team will be aware of changes to the code, new techniques or algorithms, and other relevant information that has been used.
This report also will contain details about the achievements of the project, including computational improvements, novel techniques for visualization and data handling as appropriate. If any of the original goals of the project are not met, a discussion of the reasons should be included within this report. The PI and the NCSA Project Lead will submit the Final Report to the Coordinator, who reviews it and then reports to the NCSA senior management.
PIs supported in this program will be encouraged to highlight their work through articles in NCSA's Access, focusing on the scientific capabilities and achievements of the improved codes (suitable for a broad audience). Also, a final presentation at an NCSA seminar may be appropriate to share insights achieved during the project.
