1. An Overview
of the LONI Institute
at
Southern University and A & M College
Research and Development
Rachel Vincent-Finley, Ph.D.
LONI Institute Faculty
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Southern University and A & M College
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Cyberinfrastructure Day – Howard University
June 22, 2009

2. What is LONI?
 Louisiana Optical Network Initiative
 LONI Base
 A state-of-the-art fiber optics
network that runs throughout
Louisiana and connects Louisiana
and Mississippi research universities
 $40M Optical Network, 4x 10 Gb
lambdas (10 Gb Ethernet over fiber
optics)
 $10M Supercomputers installed at 6 sites,
centrally maintained by HPC at LSU
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

3. What is LONI?
 Cybertools (http://cybertools.loni.org)
 Tools on top of LONI base
 $12M statewide NSF/EPSCOR
Cyberinfrastructure project
 LONI Institute (http://institute.loni.org)
 Collaborations on top of LONI base and
Cybertools
 $15M statewide project to recruit
computational researchers
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

4. LONI Members
 8 LONI member institutions
 LSU, ULL, LaTech, Tulane, UNO, Southern, LSUHPC at New
Orleans, LSUHPC at Shreveport
 19 LONI associate institutions in Louisiana and
Mississippi
 50 community and technical colleges
 1 K-12 public school system
 2 LONI partners
 Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB)
 Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development
(DOTD)
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

5. LONI Fiber Routes
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

6. LONI Links to NLR
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

7. LONI Supercomputing Grid
 12 supercomputers hosted at seven campuses
 10 currently online
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

8. LONI Dell Linux x86 clusters
 Queen Bee: 50 TeraFlops centerpiece
 77th in the Nov 2008 Top 500 list
 Hosted at the state's Information Systems Building
 668 nodes with 8 Intel Xeons cores @ 2.33 GHz, 8 GB RAM
 192 TB storage
 Six 5 TeraFlops clusters
 Online: Eric(LSU), Oliver(ULL), Louie(Tulane), Poseidon(UNO)
 To be installed: Painter(LaTech), Satelite (Southern)
 128 nodes with 4 Intel Xeons cores @ 2.33 Ghz, 4 GB RAM
 A total of 80 TeraFlops computing power
 One of nation's largest grid computing environments
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

9. LONI IBM p575 clusters
 Five p575 systems
 Bluedawg (LaTech) Ducky (Tulane) Zeke (ULL)
Neptune (UNO) LaCumba (Southern)
 Hardware info
 14 nodes with 8 IBM Power 5 processors @ 1.9 GHz, 16 GB
RAM, 2 146GB HDD, 1 Federation switch, 4 1Gb Ethernet
 0.851 TeraFlops theoretical peak each; a total of 4.256 total
TeraFlops
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

10. LONI HPC System Usage
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

11. Who uses LONI HPC resources?
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

12. TeraGrid Resource Providers
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

13. Who uses TeraGrid resources?
 Louisiana biology researchers are catching up
 Louisiana Biology Research Network (LBRN)
 http://lbrn.lsu.edu/portal/
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

14. LONI User Services
 Provided by LSU HPC User Services group
 User support
 Software management and maintenance
 Portal development and maintenance (http://portal.loni.org)
 User training
 Where to seek for help
 LONI website: http://www.loni.org
 LONI user documentation: http://docs.loni.org
 LONI ticket system: syshelp@loni.org
 Live help: lsuhpchelp (AIM, GoogleTalk, Yahoo Messenger)
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

15. LONI Institute at
Southern University
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

16. Project Highlights
 Energy Research Center
 Promote alternative energy development
 Track power usage – consumption and
availability
 High Performance Computing Initiative
 Couple LONI resources with Cave Automatic
Virtual Environment for computational STEM
research and applications
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

17. Project Highlights
 High performance computational biology
and material science lab
 Reduced basis MD simulation
 Computational secondary and tertiary protein
structure prediction
 LaSPACE
 Mentoring and outreach: undergraduate and
graduate research training
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

18. Project Highlights
 Autonomous Control Robotics Lab
 Equipt with 2 QuadCrawlers, 1 HexCrawler,
cameras, sensors, and personal computers
 Expose students to current technologies in
robotics and sensor networks
 Create a synergistic academic and industrial
environment
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

19. Centers and Proposed Centers
 Center for Energy and Environmental
Studies
 Center for Coastal Zone Assessment and
Remote Sensing (NASA proposal)
 Southern University Health Disparities
Research Center (NIH proposal)
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

20. College of Sciences
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Michael Stubblefield, Ph.D. Administrative Co-Principal Investigator
Vice Chancellor for Research and Strategic Initiatives
Associate Professor
Habib Mohamadian, Ph.D. Materials Co-Principal Investigator
Dean, College of Engineering
Professor
Dwayne Jerro, Ph.D. Materials Scientific Investigator
Associate Professor
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

21. College of Sciences
Department of Biological Sciences
Perpetua Muganda, Ph.D. Biology Scientific Investigator
Associate Professor
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

22. College of Sciences
Department of Computer Science
Ebrahim Khosravi, Ph.D. Computer Science Co-Principal Investigator
Chair, Professor
Rachel Vincent-Finley, Ph.D. LONI Institute Faculty
Assistant Professor
Shizhong Yang, Ph.D. LONI Institute Computational Scientist
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009

23. Contact Information
Michael Stubblefield, Ph.D.
Vice Chancellor
Office of Research and Strategic Initiatives
Southern University and A&M College
Michael_Stubblefield@subr.edu
Rachel Vincent-Finley, Ph.D.
LONI Institute Faculty
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Southern University and A & M College
revf@cmps.subr.edu
Cyberinfrastructure Day - Howard University
June 22, 2009