SC15's SCinet “Network Research Exhibition” Demonstrates Innovations on High-Capacity Networks, Driving Science Discovery

Look for these signs to find the NRE 2015 demos.

The 2015 edition of SC15’s SCinet Network Research Exhibition, a forum to showcase new and cutting-edge networking technologies, will host the Second Annual Workshop on Innovating the Network for Data Intensive Science (INDIS) on Monday, November 18.

This year’s workshop will feature new emerging technologies, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), Science DMZs, network function virtualization (NFV), software-defined exchanges (SDX), Openflow, and many more services used in computing and storage.

These technologies are changing how SCinet, universities, supercomputing centers, data centers, networks and clouds operate. During this workshop further discussions will ensue on more exotic technologies around the corner with wide-area Infiniband, Named Data Networking and Intent-based Networking.

“The influence of these technologies on the scientific process has been tremendous,” says Brian Tierney, Staff Scientist at Berkeley Lab and co-chair of NRE. “Using Science DMZs gives scientists access to a wealth of data unconstrained by geography and time to transfer the data. Supercomputing centers are now optimized around massive data pipes and storage. The worldwide high-speed optical networks and exchanges are specifically architected to support this new paradigm of data intensive science.”

SCinet is deeply interested and involved in working with these technologies, which work to support and meet various supercomputer and data application requirements. Therefore SCinet looks to demonstrate the newest developments at SC every year. The INDIS workshop will host a panel session on the influence of these developments on SCinet’s core technology, thus demonstrating the proof of concepts for inclusion in future production networks.

“Technologies like SDN, NFV and Science DMZs will make their way into SCinet as these are adopted by the HPC community. SCinet is ideally positioned to endeavor and dry-run the new emerging technologies while supporting cutting-edge high performance computing and data processing applications on the SC exhibition floor,” said Professor Dr. Cees de Laat, this year’s co-chair of NRE.

The goal of NRE 2015 is to highlight network innovations from the experiments running over SCinet, the SC conference’s dedicated high performance research and production network. SCinet serves as the platform for exhibitors to demonstrate the advanced computing resources of their home institutions and elsewhere by supporting a wide variety of bandwidth-driven applications, including supercomputing and cloud computing.

At the same time, the SCinet team is working to improve the platform and drive innovation in the arena of interconnecting networks. The INDIS workshop, organized by the SCinet team, brings together those developments from the different booths and the show floor network.

The program for INDIS can be found by clicking here.

Descriptions of the NRE demos are available here.

Editorial Note: Mary Hester was instrumental in this article.