The Milwaukee Metropolitan Technical Computing Grid

Since 2007 the Milwaukee Institute has remained committed to providing the SE Wisconsin region with low cost, high performance technical computing (HPC) systems and services as a means of accelerating economic and workforce development through collaboration and access to shared resources..  We refer to these publically accessible resources as the Milwaukee Metropolitan Grid, or "MGrid."  It comprises broadband communications circuits linking several regional data centers in which are located Institute provisioned and managed storage and compute (hardware and software) resources dedicated to supporting public-private partnerships addressing technically challenging research and development problems involving high fidelity modeling, simulation and visualization.

Our belief is that the pooling of such resources on behalf of .edu, .com and .gov users provides the greatest capability at the lowest possible costs. This principle motivated the creation of the MGrid Consortium. Membership provides access to the shared resources, encouraging collaborative multi-institution and multi-disciplinary approaches to problem solving.  The consortium also provides support for entrepreneurs, two and four year educational institutions and others without the financial means to gain access to these incrasingly important technologies.

Membership Benefits & Fees

The operating model of the Milwaukee Institute, Inc includes an MGrid Systems and Services directorate.  Access to the Institute's MGrid resources is achieved through establishing an MGrid Membership.  Membership defines a formal relation between a Member Organization ("Member") and the Milwaukee Institute, Inc ("Institute"), and is a prerequisite to gaining access to and participation in the regional MGrid cyberinfrastructure [1].  Membership provides defined access privileges to Institute High Performance Computing ("HPC") systems and services.  Memberships are established through execution of an MGrid Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") and its Addendum A-MGrid Membership and Addendum B-Research Agreement, and accompanying Addendum C-MGrid Fee Structure and requires Member organizations to identify a single Point of Contact (POC) to act as liaison to the Milwaukee Institute. 

Membership Categories

Annual Memberships fall into five MGrid Membership Categories, as defined in Table 1.  Each MGrid Membership Category is associated with an annual Membership Fee that provides Members with defined HPC resources and additional collateral Benefits, as outlined in Table 2.  MGrid Membership Fees provide Members with access to a defined level of the Institute's HPC resources for their internal use.

Table 1 – MGrid Membership Categories

Individual Membership

Individual Memberships provide access to the MGrid without reference to a specific organization ("unaffiliated").  While for this category no MOU is required, Individual Members ("Users") agree to the Institute's Standard Use Agreement (SUA) and its associated minimum Service Level Agreement (SLA).  The annual Individual Membership fees of $250 provide 2,000 core-hours of HPC compute resources, 10 GB of storage and 10 GB of network bandwidth.  Since no MOU is required for this category, Individual Members may not establish a Research Center of Excellence (RCOE) or lead collaborative research projects through functioning in the role of "Principal Investigator."  However, they do enjoy the suite of standard benefits identified in Table 2.  Additionally, Individual Members may participate in funded research projects if authorized by the projects' Principal Investigators.

Academic Membership

Academic Memberships are held by accredited academic (.edu) institutions, including K12 schools and two and four year colleges and universities requiring technical computing resources or wishing to participate in funded MGrid projects.  Academic institutions that grant PhD degrees may have host designated MGrid Research Centers of Excellence (RCOE).  In addition to the standard benefits, annual Academic Member fees of $2,500 provide 20,000 core-hours of HPC resources.  Academic memberships are governed by a MOU and an associated SLA that is oriented to the needs of technical computing supporting basic research.

As defined in the MOU, academic institutions may sponsor MGrid Research Centers of Excellence (RCOE), provide Principal Investigators for funded collaborative MGrid projects, initiate MGrid projects, and provide selective access to their own computing, storage and instrumentation resources as part of the MGrid cyberinfrastructure.

Commercial Membership

Commercial Memberships are held by for-profit commercial (.com) entities operating in markets as such Healthcare, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Transportation and Logistics, Media and Design and Defense.  In addition the standard benefits, Commercial Member fees of $5,000 provide for 40,000 core-hours of HPC services.  Commercial Memberships are governed by a MOU and associated SLA oriented to technical computing that supports engineering applications.

As defined in the MOU, commercial organizations may support existing MGrid RCOE, provide Principal Investigators for funded collaborative projects, initiate MGrid projects, and provide selective access to their own computing, storage and instrumentation resources as part of the MGrid cyberinfrastructure.

Institute policy, and its IRS non-profit status, requires that it participate only in research and development activities in commercial organizations.  Our systems and services cannot be used in an organization's commercial products or services or be encumbered by related commercial contracts.  The Institute provides no service level commitments beyond those directly supporting the R&D activities performed internal to a business.

Governmental Membership

Governmental Memberships are held by local, state and federal (.gov) agencies in need of technical computing resources or wishing to participate as members of funded MGrid projects.  In addition to the standard benefits, Governmental Memberships are governed by an MOU and associated SLA, with fees of $500 providing for 10,000 core-hours of HPC access.  Government Memberships are oriented to technical computing supporting a wide range of analytic applications.

As defined in the MOU, government agencies may support existing MGrid RCOE, provide Principal Investigators for funded collaborative projects, initiate MGrid projects, and provide selective access to their own computing, storage and instrumentation resources as part of the MGrid cyberinfrastructure.

Non-Profit Membership

Non-Profit Memberships are held by non-governmental organizations (NGO) in need of technical computing resources or wishing to participate as members of funded MGrid projects.  In addition to the standard benefits, Non-Profit Memberships are governed by an MOU and associated SLA, with annual fees of $500 providing for 10,000 core-hours of HPC access.  Non-Profit Memberships are oriented to technical computing supporting a wide range of social and environmental modeling applications.

As defined in the MOU, a Non-Profit may support an existing MGrid RCOE, lead or participate in funded collaborative projects, fund and initiate MGrid projects, and provide selective access to their own computing, storage and instrumentation resources as part of the MGrid cyberinfrastructure.

Fee Structure

As defined in Table 1, Membership fees are invoiced annually on or about each Member's anniversary date and based on a specific Membership Category.  For MGrid HPC usage above the "Core-Hour Allocation," billing is based on a standard unit of MGrid HPC resource consumption – the "Core-Hour[3]."  

Associated with each Membership Category and proportional to the annual Membership Fee, HPC Core-Hour Allocations are shown in Table 1.  These allocations are for an individual Member's unrestricted use, and include use of modeling, simulation and visualization applications.  The annual allocation may be used by one or more credentialed [4] users from a Member organization for HPC training purposes, experimentation with modeling, simulation or visualization software, or for use as part of a funded collaborative MGrid research project.   When authorized in writing by a Member organization's Point of Contact, users may apply to the Milwaukee Institute for MGriduser name and password credentials.  They may then access the HPC cluster and consume some or all of the Member organization's allocation or they may participate as members of funded MGrid collaborative research projects and use that project's allocation. 

Using MGrid Collaboration Tools [5], members of all Membership Categories may establish Communities of Interest (COI) and invite other credentialed users to join in collaborative projects.  These projects may use annual allocations or consume additional resources at fixed rates defined in Table 3.

Additionally, Academic and Commercial memberships may establish internal or collaborative research activities by creating MGrid Research Centers of Excellence (RCOE) and may define and sponsor (fund) specific MGrid collaborative research projects.  Member-sponsored research projects require that the Member POC identify and credential projects Principal Investigators (PI).  Participation by other credentialed participants in funded projects is at the discretion of the project's PI.

In addition to HPC allocations, the ability to create and manage research projects, and the ability to credential users, Memberships enjoy additional benefits, outlined in Table 2.

Table 2 – MGrid Membership Benefits

If a Member organization's annual core-hour allocation is consumed before the end of the annual renewal term, the Member organization may purchase additional core-hours at the then established Member resource cost structure.    Additionally, the Institute maintains software licenses for a number of professional modeling, simulation and visualization packages.  The cost to the Institute of these licenses is dependent on the number of HPC cores available in the MGrid cluster.   Typically, for each core used by a user, a licensed HPC "instance" or "Worker" is employed.  Consequently, the Institute charges Member organizations by the number Workers employed by the user's application. These charges are in addition to the Core-Hour costs, regardless of whether core-hours a within or beyond the annual allocation.

As of January 1, 2013 standard fees are defined in Table 1.  In summary.over and above annual allocations, core-hour costs range from $.25 - $.50 and storage costs are subject to usage.

[1] A cyberinfrastructure comprises integrated high-performance computing (HPC), high-throughput computing (HTC), high-speed (broadband wired and wireless) networking, mass data storage, energy efficient datacenters, application software and tools, and human resources able to support implementation of advanced science, business and engineering applications.

[3] A core-hour is a measurable unit of computation that a single CPU core can accomplished in one wall clock hour.  For example, the Institute's 512-core HPC cluster (hpc01) is able to provide ~375,000 core-hours per month, or ~4.5M core-hours per year.  Our current plan for a second cluster (hpc02) will support 3,000 cores and produce 2,160,000 core-hours/mo, or  ~26M core-hours/yr.

[4] A credentialed user is any employee or affiliate of the Member organization authorized by the Member and holding MGrid login credentials issued and authenticated by the Milwaukee Institute.

[5] MGrid Collaboration Tools are available through credentialed access to the Institute's website, www.mkei.org.