[an error occurred while processing this directive]

NERSC 3 Greenbook

Next: Specific Recommendations Up: The Energy Research Computational Previous: Basic Research and Human

The High Performance Computing Access Center Services

In addition to the standard support services that the NERSC consulting staff there are additional services that are required. The standard services include consulting on and facilities for:

• User Account initialization and security.
• Basic system utilization (batch and interactive computing).
• Third party or ISV application access and utilization.
• Tools for Principle Investigators and account managers to allocate their available resources and plan their own resource utilization.
• Tools that report the status of NERSC systems to users.
• Mechanisms to transition applications to MPP architectures (e.g., MPP program and applications group support).

Additional standard services that should be added are:

• Mechanisms for users to share their technology (c.f., Section 4.2.5.
• Mechanisms for users to report their results on-line (e.g., space for WWW pages, and/or registration of links at user sites).
• Support for the ``users helping users'' efforts.

One component of the decision to move the NERSC facility to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was the ability to strengthen the ties of the facility to ER research programs. NERSC has planned to build strategic partnerships with various research efforts of the user community. We strongly encourage and support these efforts and hope that this will include not only traditional supercomputing efforts but those targeted at the utilization of the MPP resource.

NERSC 3 Greenbook

Next: Specific Recommendations Up: The Energy Research Computational Previous: Basic Research and Human