PEARC25
- Columbus, OH
Join a Globus session at PEARC25 and stop by our exhibit table to learn what’s new.
Date: July 22, 1:30-5:00 pm
Speaker: Kyle Chard
Globus Compute: Federated Function as a Service for the Computing Continuum
Growing data volumes, new computing paradigms, and increasing hardware heterogeneity are driving the need to execute computational tasks across a continuum of distributed computing resources. Such needs are motivated by the desire to compute closer to data acquisition sources, exploit specialized computing resources (e.g., hardware accelerators), provide real-time processing of data, reduce energy consumption (e.g., by matching workload with hardware), and scale simulations beyond the limits of a single computer. Globus Compute addresses these needs by delivering a hybrid cloud platform implementing the Function-as-a-Service (Faas) paradigm. Researchers first register their desired function with the cloud-hosted Globus Compute service, they can then request invocation of that function with arbitrary input arguments to be executed on remote cyberinfrastructure. Globus Compute manages the reliable and secure execution of the function, provisioning resources, staging function code and inputs, managing safe and secure execution (optionally using containers), monitoring execution, and asynchronously returning results to users via the cloud platform. Functions are executed by the Globus Compute endpoint software—an agent that may be installed by administrators and offered to user communities or installed by users anywhere they have access. The endpoint effectively turns any existing resource (e.g., laptop, cloud, cluster, supercomputer, or container orchestration cluster) into a FaaS endpoint. Over the last three years, Globus Compute has been used by thousands of researchers around the world to execute more than 50M tasks across more than 15,000 distributed computing endpoints.
This tutorial builds upon the success of a similar tutorial hosted at PEARC 2024. That tutorial was attended by 20-25 people and was the first tutorial to close registration due to all slots being filled. The tutorial will discuss opportunities for FaaS in research computing, approaches for portable execution across endpoints, and the benefits of this approach (e.g., performance, energy efficiency). Further, it will directly relate to modern approaches in CI, for example enabling fine-grained and portable allocations in NSF ACCESS and as a common interface for remote computing in DOE’s integrated research infrastructure. The tutorial will extend existing tutorial materials that have been delivered at many international venues.
Date: July 22, 11 am - 3:30 pm (pre-registered participants only)
Globus Office Hours - 108 (co-located event)
An increasingly large segment of the PEARC community is using the Globus platform for research data management and remote computation. This meeting is an opportunity for current and prospective users to engage with the Globus team and get answers to questions related to their specific use cases and Globus implementation on campus. We will be available to answer ad hoc questions and do “deep dives” into specific services to help users better understand best practices and what is possible.