**National Fusion Collaboratory -- *"Advancing the Science of Fusion
Research"***

## **PI:** D.P. Schissel,1 **Co--PIs:** G. Abla,1 J. Burruss,1 S. Flanagan,1 I.T. Foster,3 T.W. Fredian,4 M.J. Greenwald,4 C.R. Johnson,5 K. Keahey,3 S.A. Klasky,7 K. Li,2 D.C. McCune,7 M. Papka, 3 Q. Peng,1 L. Randerson,7 A. Sanderson,5 J. Stillerman,4 R. Stevens,3 M.R. Thompson,6 G. Wallace2

1General Atomics, 2Princeton University, 3Argonne National Lab.,
4Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 5University of Utah, 6Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab., 7Princeton Plasma Physics Lab.

Summary

***The National Fusion Collaboratory is developing a persistent
infrastructure to enable scientific collaboration for all aspects of
magnetic fusion energy research. Computer scientists and fusion
scientists are teaming together to create a robust, user-friendly
collaborative software environment and deploying this to the more than
one thousand fusion scientists in forty institutions who perform
magnetic fusion research in the United States. This activity is
transforming the way fusion does business and is ultimately accelerating
understanding and innovation towards the design of an attractive new
fusion energy source.***

Developing a reliable energy system that is economically and
environmentally sustainable is the long--term goal of Fusion Energy
Science (FES) research. In the U.S., FES experimental research is
centered at three large facilities with a replacement value of over
\$1B. As the experiments performed at these facilities have increased in
size and complexity there has been a concurrent growth in the number and
importance of collaborations among large groups at the experimental
sites and smaller groups located nationwide. Teaming with the
experimental community is a theoretical and simulation community whose
efforts range from the applied analysis of experimental data to the
development of fundamental theory (e.g., creation of realistic nonlinear
3D plasma models). As a result of the highly collaborative nature of FES
research, the community is facing new and unique challenges.

The SciDAC-funded National Fusion Collaboratory (NFC) Project unites
fusion and computer science researchers to directly address these
challenges. The overall goal of the NFC project is to improve the
productivity of fusion sciences research via the development and
deployment of advanced software tools that reduce the technical barriers
to collaboration and sharing on a national scale. Our vision is to make
resources -- data and computers along with analysis, simulation, and
visualization codes -- widely and transparently available as
network-accessible services, thereby enabling real-time
multi-institutional collaboration on fusion experiments, and
facilitating more direct comparisons between experiments and theory.

To achieve these goals, the NFC project is integrating advances in
computer science such as grid middleware, experiment-specific
applications and computing, storage resources, and advanced
collaborative environments to bring effective end-to-end capabilities to
the scientist. This work has led to the creation and usage of a national
FES "Grid" (FusionGrid or FG) that is a system for secure sharing of
computation, visualization, and data resources over the Internet.

Most recently, FusionGrid services were integrated together for a
demonstration of the collaborative fusion experimental control room that
requires rapid data analysis that can be assimilated in near real time
by a geographically dispersed research team. Access Grid technology was
used to allow for shared audio and video as well as shared applications.
Time-critical off-site data analysis in support of the experiment was
conducted on FG through a computational reservation system that
guaranteed analysis in a specified time window. A tiled display wall was
used to enhance the collaborative work environment within the control
room through application sharing. The SCIRun visualization tool
facilitated the near real-time comparison of predictive simulations with
experimental data.

Three accomplishments that highlight the success of the NFC project are;

-   The data repositories of the 3 main U.S. fusion experiments are
    securely available worldwide via FG.

-   Over 1500 fusion plasma simulations were run 20 times faster using
    an FG code service (10,000 CPU hours for 9 different U.S. and
    European fusion devices).

-   Rather than travel, a San Diego scientist used FG services to
    remotely lead the JET fusion experiment located in England.

Near-term work by the NFC project includes the usage of the
collaborative control room during actual experiments at the 3 main U.S.
sites as well as the leadership of the DIII-D experiment in San Diego by
a remote team of Japanese collaborators. Feedback from this real-world
experience will be used to modify FG services to provide maximum benefit
for the fusion scientist. Critical areas of future work also include
adding more services to FG, increasing data throughput capabilities to
effectively handle large simulations, and ease-of-use issues.
Ease-of-use related to security and adding new services is even more
important as the number of scientists using FG increases.

![](media/image1.png){width="3.0in"
height="2.1618055555555555in"}*Figure 1. FusionGrid services were
recently used by a scientist in San Diego to lead the JET fusion
experiment in England.*

The collaborative technology being deployed by the NFC is scalable to
fusion research well beyond the present U.S. program. As specified by
the US DOE Facilities for the Future Report, the two highest priorities
for the Office of Science are the next-generation fusion experimental
device ITER and the Ultra Scale Computing Capability (USSCC) to increase
scientific computing, including fusion-related, by a factor of 100. Key
to the success of these facilities is collaborative technology like that
being developed by the NFC.

In recognition of the importance of our work, the NFC project was asked
by ITER to present the collaborative control room concept. This concept
is now being discussed as the model for organizing the worldwide
scientific collaborations that will be required for the success of ITER.

**For further information on this subject contact:**

David P. Schissel, Lead--PI

National Fusion Collaboratory SciDAC Project

<http://www.fusiongrid.org/project/>

Phone: 858-455-3387

Schissel@fusion.gat.com