Harvesting Spare CPU cycles - The Monash Green SPONGE

The Monash SPONGE (Serendipitous Processing on Operating Nodes in Grid Environment) soaks up spare CPU cycles that would otherwise be wasted within operating desktop computers around the Monash campuses.  The Monash SPONGE is a component of the Monash Campus Grid.  The harvested compute capacity is available for use by Monash researchers.

The Monash Green Sponge currently comprises over 1,000 CPU cores spanning several faculties, campuses and divisions, including ITS labs. Participating faculties include: the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Information Technology. The Monash SPONGE uses Condor  to execute Java, C, C++, Fortran-77 and Globus jobs.

A preliminary user guide is available here:  User guide

Load utilisation figures can be seen at here

For access or to contribute to the Monash Green SPONGE, please email: merc@adm.monash.edu.au , or contact Russell Keil (ext. 54782) / Anthony Beitz (ext. 58681).

Real-time Monash campus maps of node usage

Caulfield Campus	Clayton Campus	Peninsula Campus

Showcase

Currently, over 1,000 CPU cores, spanning several faculties, campuses and divisions (including ITS labs) participate in the Monash Green SPONGE.  This environment uses Condor software to distribute suitable HPC jobs to soak up idle CPU time on available desktop computers around the Monash network.  In the first 8 months of 2008, the Monash Green SPONGE delivered over 250,000 CPU hours (30 CPU years) of compute time to key Monash research programmes without the purchase of any additional hardware, providing an extra 40% over what the central MSG provides.  Requiring only staff effort, we aim to increase the participation of faculties to build one of the largest distributed compute facilities in Australia.

Latin Squares, Dr Ian Wanless and Judith Egan, School of Mathematical Sciences. This project aims to develop the theory on important substructures of 'latin squares'. Latin squares play an important role in pure mathematics and have many applications in the areas of combinatorial design, such as event programme scheduling, statistical experiments and error correcting codes. The research team uses distributed computing, including the Monash Sun Grid, Monash Green SPONGE and Brecca  HPC facilities, as an investigative tool to find patterns which can then be turned into mathematical theorems by humans.

Molecular Replacement, Jason Schmidberger and Dr. Ashley Buckle, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.  One of the major challenges for Protein Crystallographers is to solve the ‘Phase Problem’ for the diffraction data that they collect from their protein crystals, thereby solving their three dimensional structures. A very useful and common method of doing this is Molecular Replacement (MR), where a homologous protein’s structure is used as a ‘starting point’ in the structure determination process.

The increasing importance of the Monash Green SPONGE to Monash research

Figures for the first eight months of 2008 show the Green SPONGE added 40% of 'free' compute power on top of MSG. In more recent months, the Monash SPONGE has provided CPU hours equal to that provided by the dedicated Monash Sun Grid.

Currently, Monash SPONGE only uses a small proportion of the 10,000+ computers at Monash University. As such, this resource has plenty of scope to grow.

There's no other way we could afford a 10,000 CPU HPC at Monash, yet this is an achievable target with the Green SPONGE.

Top beneficiaries of this project include: