Exploitation of Switched
Lightpaths for e-Health
Lee Momtahan and Andrew Simpson
Oxford University Computing Lab
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Outline
•
•
•
•
•
•
Introduction
Integrative Biology use cases
e-Diammond use cases
NeuroGrid use cases
Challenges
Status & Conclusions
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Introduction
• ESLEA E3 aims to pioneer the use of the
UKLight switched lightpath network with high
demand applications the e-Health domain
• e-Health, given its strength within the e-Science
community, is an important domain
• e-Health includes non-functional concerns
(e.g.security, QoS) making it an appropriate
candidate for validating and demonstrating the
benefits of such networks
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Multiscale Modelling of the heart
… and Cancer
What causes heart disease?
What causes cancer?
Together these diseases cause 61% of deaths in the UK
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Simple Data Transfer
• Simulation runs produce TBs
of data
• Computation facility is HPCx
• Data storage facility is RALNGS
• Potential for 50-fold increase in
throughput with UKLight
compared to JANET
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Distributed Simulation
• Equations governing the electrical activity are
coupled to those governing the mechanical
pumping action
• Whereas the former are best solved on an MPI
Architecture, OpenMP is best for the latter
• UKLight could provide a sufficiently low latency
link between MPI and OpenMP facilities e.g.
HPCx and TeraGrid to investigate this approach
• Requires co-scheduling of all 3 resources
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Remote reading
• Breast cancer screening using digital
mamograms
• Currently, analog mamograms sent by mail to
remote sites
– For second opinion
– For ‘load balancing’ shortage of UK radiologists
• Digital mamograms sent over swiched lightpaths
• Improved response time & better patient care
• Typical radiologist reads 100GB worth of
mamogram data per hour
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Distributed image processing
• Analysis of neurological images
involves applying sequences of image
processing algorithms
• Analysis typically applied to large
batches of high resolution images
• Different algorithms applied at
different locations
– Intellectual property restricitons
– Specialised hardware
• Switched lightpaths would provide
ideal transport
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Network configuration
• UKLight is centrally administered
• But, responsibility for routing traffic from
UKLight to hosts is scattered across the
organisation(s)
– Campus LAN
– Departmental LAN
– Host administrators
– etc
• Debugging can be difficult
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Last mile
• Campus LAN may not have sufficient
capacity
• Unlikely to give QoS guarantees
• May be solved with a dedicated network
path, but can be difficult to organise
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Shared hosts
• Often hosts are shared between multiple
users
– Common in e-science/grid contexts
• May necessitate co-allocation of lightpath
and hosts
• If source and destination hosts are shared
– Then so is the lightpath
• QoS guarantees lost
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Status
• Simple data transfer
– Transfer over UKlight achieved with speed
improvement
– Investigating bottlenecks for further improvements
• Distributed simulation
– Electrical model working
• Coupled model under development
• Other use cases
– Paper accepted to 19th IEEE Symposium on
Computer Based Medical Systems
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06
Conclusions
• E3 is evaluating the potential of switched
lightpaths
– By delivering benefits to a specific project:
Integrative Biology
– By soliciting use cases from a wide number of
projects
• A number of challenges, both
organisational and technical remain
Technical Collaboration
Meeting – 20th June 06