Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

The Cactus Framework and Toolkit: Design and Applications

Invited Talk

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
High Performance Computing for Computational Science — VECPAR 2002 (VECPAR 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2565))

Abstract

We describe Cactus, a framework for building a variety of computing applications in science and engineering, including astrophysics, relativity and chemical engineering.We first motivate by example the need for such frameworks to support multi-platform, high performance applications across diverse communities. We then describe the design of the latest release of Cactus (Version 4.0) a complete rewrite of earlier versions, which enables highly modular, multi-language, parallel applications to be developed by single researchers and large collaborations alike. Making extensive use of abstractions, we detail how we are able to provide the latest advances in computational science, such as interchangeable parallel data distribution and high performance IO layers, while hiding most details of the underlying computational libraries from the application developer. We survey how Cactus 4.0 is being used by various application communities, and describe how it will also enable these applications to run on the computational Grids of the near future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Foster, I.: (2002). The Grid: A New Infrastructure for 21st Century Science. Physics Today, Febrary. 198, 199, 220

    Google Scholar 

  2. Cactus Numerical Relativity Community http://www.cactuscode.org/Community/Relativity.html. 199

  3. Allen, G., Seidel, E., and Shalf, J.: (2002). Scientific Computing on the Grid. Byte, Spring. 199, 221, 222

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cactus: http://www.cactuscode.org. 199

  5. Cactus Users Guidehttp://www.cactuscode.org/Guides/Stable/UsersGuide/UsersGuideStable.pdf. 199, 206

  6. Allen, G., Benger, W., Dramlitsch, T., Goodale, T., Hege, H., Lanfermann, G., Merzky, A., Radke, T., and Seidel, E.: (2001). Cactus Grid Computing: Review of Current Development. In R. Sakellariou, J. Keane, J. Gurd, and L. Freeman, editors, Europar 2001: Parallel Processing, Proceedings of 7th International Conference Manchester, UK August 28–31, 2001. Springer. 199

    Google Scholar 

  7. Parashar, M. and Browne, J. C.: (2000). IMA Volume on Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement (SAMR) Grid Methods, chapter System Engineering for High Performance Computing Software: The HDDA/DAGH Infrastructure for Implementation of Parallel Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement, pages 1–18. Springer-Verlag. 200

    Google Scholar 

  8. Grid Adaptive Computational Engine (GrACE) http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/~parashar/TASSL/Projects/GrACE/. 200

  9. Anninos, P., Camarda, K., Massó, J., Seidel, E., Suen, W.-M., and Towns, J.: (1995). Three-dimensional numerical relativity: The evolution of black holes. Phys. Rev. D, 52(4):2059–2082. 200

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Walker, P.: (1998). Horizons, Hyperbolic Systems, and Inner Boundary Conditions in Numerical Relativity. Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois. 200

    Google Scholar 

  11. Balay, S., Gropp, W., McInnes, L. C., and Smith, B.: (1998). PETSc-The Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Compuation. http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/. 201, 216

  12. TASC: Software Engineering Support of the Third Round of Scientific Grand Challenge Investigations: Task 4, Review of Current Frameworks http://sdcd.gsfc.nasa.gov/ESS/esmf tasc/t400.html. 203

  13. Concurrent Versions System (CVS) Home Page http://www.cvshome.org/. 206

  14. Cygnus Solutions (Cygwin) Home Page: http://www.cygwin.com. 206

  15. The Autoconf Home Page http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/autoconf.html. 207

  16. Allen, G., Dramlitsch, T., Foster, I., Karonis, N., Ripeanu, M., Seidel, E., and Toonen, B.: (2001). Supporting Efficicient Execution in Heterogeneous Distributed Computing Environments with Cactus and Globus. In Proceedings of Supercomputing 2001, Denver. http://www.cactuscode.org/Papers/GordonBell 2001.ps.gz. 213, 221

  17. The xgraph and ygraph Home Pages http://jean-luc.aei-potsdam.mpg.de/Codes/xgraph, http://www.aei.mpg.de/~pollney/ygraph. 214

  18. GNUPlot Home Page http://www.gnuplot.org. 214, 217

  19. IEEEIO Home Page http://zeus.ncsa.uiuc.edu/~jshalf/FlexIO/. 214

  20. Open DX Home Page http://www.opendx.org. 214, 217

  21. Alcubierre, M., Brandt, S., Brügmann, B., Holz, D., Seidel, E., Takahashi, R., and Thornburg, J.: (2001). Symmetry without Symmetry: Numerical Simulation of Axisymmetric Systems using Cartesian Grids. Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, 10:273–289. Gr-qc/9908012. 215

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Dierks, T. and Allen, C.: The TLS Protocol Version 1.0: RFC 2246 January 1999. 217

    Google Scholar 

  23. Rescorla, E.: HTTP Over TLS: RFC 2818 May 2000. 217

    Google Scholar 

  24. Frier, A., Karlton, P., and Kocher, P.: The SSL 3.0 Protocol. Netscape Communications Corp. November 18, 1996. 217

    Google Scholar 

  25. Foster, I., Kesselman, C., Tsudik, G., and Tuecke, S.: (1998). A Security Architecture for Computational Grids. In Proceedings of 5th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security Conference, pages 83–92. 217

    Google Scholar 

  26. Shalf, J. and Bethel, E.W.: Cactus and Visapult: An Ultra-High Performance Grid-Distributed Visualization Architecture Using Connectionless Protocols. Submitted to IEEE Computer Graphics and Animation. Submitted. 218

    Google Scholar 

  27. Camarda, K., He, Y., and Bishop, K.A.: (2001). A Parallel Chemical Reactor Simulation Using Cactus. In Proceedings of Linux Clusters: The HPC Revolution, NCSA 2001. 220

    Google Scholar 

  28. Dijkstra, H.A., Oksuzoglu, H., Wubs, F.W., and Botta, F. F.: (2001). A Fully Implicit Model of the three-dimensional thermohaline ocean circulation. Journal of Computational Physics, 173:685–715. 220

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Allen, G., Goodale, T., Massó, J., and Seidel, E.: (1999). The Cactus Computational Toolkit and Using Distributed Computing to Collide Neutron Stars. In Proceedings of Eighth IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing, HPDC-8, Redondo Beach, 1999. IEEE Computer Society. 221

    Google Scholar 

  30. Allen, G., Benger, W., Goodale, T., Hege, H., Lanfermann, G., Merzky, A., Radke, T., and Seidel, E.: (2000). The Cactus Code: A Problem Solving Environment for the Grid. In Proceedings of Ninth IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing, HPDC-9, Pittsburgh. 221

    Google Scholar 

  31. Benger, W., Foster, I., Novotny, J., Seidel, E., Shalf, J., Smith, W., and Walker, P.: (March 1999). Numerical Relativity in a Distributed Environment. In Proceedings of the Ninth SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing. 221

    Google Scholar 

  32. Allen, G., Dramlitsch, T., Goodale, T., Lanfermann, G., Radke, T., Seidel, E., Kielmann, T., Verstoep, K., Balaton, Z., Kacsuk, P., Szalai, F., Gehring, J., Keller, A., Streit, A., Matyska, L., Ruda, M., Krenek, A., Frese, H., Knipp, H., Merzky, A., Reinefeld, A., Schintke, F., Ludwiczak, B., Nabrzyski, J., Pukacki, J., Kersken, H.-P., and Russell, M.: (2001). Early Experiences with the EGrid Testbed. In IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid. Available at http://www.cactuscode.org/Papers/CCGrid 2001.pdf.gz. 221

  33. GridLab: A Grid Application Toolkit and Testbed Project Home Page http://www.gridlab.org. 221

  34. Allen, G., Goodale, T., Russell, M., Seidel, E., and Shalf, J.: (2003). Grid Computing: Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality, chapter Classifying and Enabling Grid Applications. Wiley. 222

    Google Scholar 

  35. Seidel, E., Allen, G., Merzky, A., and Nabrzyski, J.: (2002). GridLab — A Grid Application Toolkit and Testbed. Future Generation Computer Systems, 18:1143–1153. 222

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  36. Allen, G., Benger, W., Goodale, T., Hege, H., Lanfermann, G., Merzky, A., Radke, T., Seidel, E., and Shalf, J.: (2001). Cactus Tools for Grid Applications. Cluster Computing, 4:179–188. http://www.cactuscode.org/Papers/CactusTools.ps.gz. 224

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476, Golm, Germany

    Tom Goodale, Gabrielle Allen, Gerd Lanfermann, Thomas Radke & Edward Seidel

  2. Departament de Física, Universitat de les Illes Balears, E-07071, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    Joan Massó

  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA

    John Shalf

Authors
  1. Tom Goodale
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gabrielle Allen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gerd Lanfermann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Joan Massó
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Thomas Radke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Edward Seidel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. John Shalf
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Engenharia da, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    José M. L. M. Palma  & A. Augusto Sousa  & 

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Tennessee, 37996-1301, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Jack Dongarra

  3. Departamento de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera, s/n, Apartado 22012, 46020, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Hernández

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Goodale, T. et al. (2003). The Cactus Framework and Toolkit: Design and Applications. In: Palma, J.M.L.M., Sousa, A.A., Dongarra, J., Hernández, V. (eds) High Performance Computing for Computational Science — VECPAR 2002. VECPAR 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2565. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36569-9_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36569-9_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00852-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36569-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation