Sunday, August 2, 2015

XSEDE Gateways, Get on the HPC Train With Less Effort

We have written about XSEDE (Arc Docs) before, a set of national computing resources for research.

XSEDE Gateways on the other hand are simple, normally web-based front ends to the XSEDE computers for specific areas of interest.  They lower the barrier to getting started utilizing super computers in research, and are a great educational tool also.

List of current XSEDE Gateways. 

One might want to use a gateway for the following reasons:
  • Not comfortable with using super computers at the command line
  • Don't need the power of a huge system but need more than their laptop
  • Are looking for an easy to introduce new users to an area of simulation
  • Undergraduate work supplementing  course material
A snapshot of some portals (over 30 at this writing):


The iPlant Collaborative Agave API Integrative Biology and Neuroscience Visit Portal
VLab - Virtual Laboratory for Earth and Planetary Materials Materials Research Visit Portal
NIST Digital Repository of Mathematical Formulae Mathematical Sciences Visit Portal
Integrated database and search engine for systems biology (IntegromeDB) Molecular Biosciences Visit Portal
ROBETTA: Automated Prediction of Protein Structure and Interactions Molecular Biosciences Visit Portal
Providing a Neuroscience Gateway Neuroscience Biology Visit Portal
General Automated Atomic Model Parameterization Physical Chemistry Visit Portal
SCEC Earthworks Project Seismology Visit Portal
Asteroseismic Modeling Portal Stellar Astronomy and Astrophysics Visit Portal
CIPRES Portal for inference of large phylogenetic trees Systematic and Population Biology Visit Portal
Computational Anatomy Visualization, Graphics, and Image Processing Visit Portal