What’s new with FABRIC?
An update from Ilya Baldin, FABRIC Principal Investigator
The process of FABRIC construction is nearing its completion. In the past two months we brought on-line more sites (Rutgers University, Princeton University) and continued working on the last few remaining ones – University of Bristol, University of Tokyo, University of Hawai’i, SRI and the educational site at the University of Kentucky. Most of them are awaiting final configuration of the dataplane connections before they are added to the list of operational sites.
The team was very proud to announce the completion of the work on FABRIC TeraCore, bringing the unprecedented 1.2Tbps capacity to an experimental testbed – a first in history!
With the help from teams from ESnet, IIT, Northeastern University and UMass Amherst we operationalized the FPGAs installed in FABRIC providing experimenters with exhaustive documentation and examples on using P4 programming language with FABRIC FPGAs.
In the past few months, the team focused on making a lot of small improvements to the facility. One of the major milestones has been the addition of FPGA support to the list of available hardware. Most FABRIC sites today have a U280 FPGA deployed and the team is working with several researchers to test and document how to develop and deploy P4-on-FPGAs.
We’ve also been preparing for the SuperComputing conference – there will also be a number of experimenter presentations and demos throughout the conference. FABRIC presentations, office hours and an FPGA drop-in (see below) will take place at the RENCI booth.
FABRIC at Supercomputing 2023
Swing by and see us at Booth #1663
Those interested in learning more about FABRIC at Supercomputing 2023 will be able to visit RENCI’s in-person booth (#1663) and learn about updates to the project. FABRIC leadership team members Ilya Baldin and Paul Ruth will present a talk at the booth at the below times:
- Tuesday, November 14 at 11:00 AM MT
- Wednesday, November 15 at 2:00 PM MT
- Thursday, November 16 at 10:30 AM MT
Each of the talks is followed by a 30 minute office hours session at the RENCI booth for anyone wanting a one-on-one discussion or help with account setup. In addition there will be ACCESS/FABRIC office hours at the UKY booth (#1246) on November 15, from 10:30 – 11:30 AM MT.
FABRIC will be represented at the 2023 INDIS workshop Technical Session on Tuesday, November 14 at 2 PM MT at the SCinet Theater on the exhibit floor. PI Ilya Baldin will talk about FABRIC as part of the panel and a number of FABRIC users will show demos of their FABRIC experiments.
In conjunction with ESnet and IIT, the FABRIC team will host an FPGA drop-in at the RENCI booth. We encourage those interested in running FPGA-based experiments on FABRIC to stop-by for a discussion during the block. ESnet smartNIC, a fully open source P4 + FPGA development environment for FABRIC developers is fully deployed in the NSF FABRIC testbed. If you are at SC23 in Denver, join us at the RENCI booth on Wednesday, November 15 at 11:00 AM MT to meet the developers, ask questions and get a 1:1 explanation of how to do P4 development on FABRIC, without any prior FPGA design experience. We will cover everything from “hello world” tutorials, to deep dives on the Verilog architecture, DPDK and other driver software.
Additionally, the Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN) will present the talk, “Exploring Democratized Access to Research Instruments and FABRIC” on Wednesday, November 15 at 4 PM MT at the RENCI booth.
Finally, on Thursday, November 16 at 1:30 PM MT, FABRIC PI Ilya Baldin will be part of a panel called, “Unleashing the Power within Data Democratization: Needs, Challenges, and Opportunities” in Room 205 – 207.
Beyond Booth #1663, we’re excited to announce that there will be FABRIC facility ports at SCinet at several booths this year, including:
- Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center | Booth #1203
- StarLight | Booth #1281
- California Institute of Technology / CACR | Booth #1255
Check out our website for a full list of events.
FABRIC Ambassador Program
Share your expertise on FABRIC with the world
The FABRIC team is seeking ambassadors to join our team and spread the word about our platform. Ambassadors should have experience running experiments on FABRIC and guiding collaborators through the portal.
FABRIC ambassadors will help researchers learn more about FABRIC and its features through hosting annual local or virtual gatherings, presenting at KNIT workshops and community webinars, and identifying user success stories. Additionally, they will engage students in active learning on the FABRIC portal by leading tutorials and identifying opportunities for students to present their work. Program participants will get the first opportunity to test and approve new features on the FABRIC portal, receive discounts to in-person FABRIC events, and have their research promoted directly to our NSF program managers, as well as our community through social media and mailing channels.
Complete our interest form.
FABRIC In The News
NSF FABRIC Project Announces New Advancement in Network Infrastructure with TeraCore’s 1.2 Tbps Speed
The NSF-funded FABRIC project has completed installation of a unique network infrastructure connection, called the TeraCore—a ring spanning the continental U.S.—which boasts data transmission speeds of 1.2 Terabits per second (Tbps), or one trillion bits per second.
FABRIC previously established preeminence with its cross-continental infrastructure, but the project has now hit another milestone as the only testbed capable of transmitting data at these speeds—the highest being twelve times faster than what was available before. An additional benefit of this infrastructure is to allow FABRIC to federate with other experimental and science facilities at 400Gbps.
Read the full article online.
Advancing Security
Using FABRIC for Security Research
FABRIC Security Engineer and Computer Science PhD student Phuong Cao has received an NSF grant in Formal Methods to do experimentation on FABRIC. As PI on NSF grant 2319190 “Bringing Verification-Aware Languages and Federated Authentication to Enable Secure Computing for Scientific Communities” Cao will be using FABRIC to explore how to use verification-aware languages to provide rigorous mathematical proofs that existing federated authentication implementations (CILogon, SciTokens) are correct in order to enable researchers across global institutions, industrial partners, and government agencies to collaborate safely.
FABRIC Office Hours
Connect and troubleshoot with leadership and support
We have made a new office hours system available from the FABRIC portal that allows stakeholders to directly book time with the leadership team and technical team members to discuss anything from the feasibility of their experiments, to software questions, to experiment security, to connecting new facilities into FABRIC.
Book an appointment on our scheduling platform.
Defining FABRIC
A glossary for common terms used by our researchers
Control Plane: The interface for controlling and configuring FABRIC’s underlying hardware which is not exposed to users. Experimenters can create and configure their own control plane components in their slice(s).
Data Plane: The part of the network that carries user traffic; it is where experiment packets are transmitted. The data plane in FABRIC can be composed of network components that are responsible for forwarding packets.
Management Plane: Where experimenters access their virtual machines (VMs), via a bastion host, and where the FABRIC team monitors and manages the network.
Facility Port: If you want to attach elements of infrastructure external to FABRIC to your slice, you can do so using one or more Facility Ports. Facility Ports are pre-negotiated connections between the FABRIC data plane and some other external network, such as a campus network, a data center, or a scientific instrument. Once a Facility Port is added to the FABRIC data plane, it can be made part of a slice and connected to via one of the available network services.
See the full glossary on our website.
Open Solicitations
Funding opportunities that encourage the use of FABRIC
Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC): The SaTC program welcomes proposals that address cybersecurity and privacy, drawing on expertise in one or more of these areas: computing, communication, and information sciences; engineering; education; mathematics; statistics; and social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Proposals that advance the field of cybersecurity and privacy within a single discipline or interdisciplinary efforts that span multiple disciplines are both welcome. Full proposals can be submitted at any time.
See a list of all solicitations mentioning FABRIC on our website.
Do you have a project idea that would benefit from using FABRIC? The FABRIC team welcomes requests for Letters of Collaboration. To expedite the process, please contact us by filling out the form.
Upcoming Events
Leadership team presence at industry or academic events
Supercomputing 2023: Our world is changing rapidly. Complex challenges are suddenly arising alongside an urgent demand for answers. Leveraging HPC, skilled minds employ innovative technologies to respond to the call — driven by data, simulating possibilities, and unlocking new solutions. By harnessing the power of HPC, the SC community is unleashing a deeper understanding of our world at an unprecedented pace. Ilya Baldin and Paul Ruth will be on the exhibit floor at RENCI Booth (#1663). The event will take place in Denver, CO from November 13 – 16.
See a list of all upcoming events on our website.