Experimenting on complex-system models in the Cloud with OpenMOLE

16 octobre 2012 à 11h00, Amphi 6, Bâtiment "Le Patio", 22 rue Descartes, Université de Strasbourg.
Conférenciers invités par l'IPHC (Jérôme Pansanel).

  
Romain Reuillon and Mathieu Leclaire
Institut des Systèmes Complexes Paris Ile-de-France (ISC-PIF)

Experimenting on complex-system models in the Cloud with OpenMOLE

Complex-system models describe "multiple levels of collective structure and organization". Since such models are usually impossible to solve analytically, their analysis is often carried out by simulation on high performance computing environments.

Cluster, grid and cloud computing are nowadays adopted, but their use still requires specific technical and methodological skills. That is why high performance computing is not yet part of the daily practices in numerous communities where it would be needed.

OpenMOLE (Open MOdeL Experiment) is a FOSS framework that implements a solution to this problem. It emphasizes on the easy integration of home-brewed models and on transparent scaling from a single computer up to a grid execution. It makes it possible for the modellers to build workflows for experimenting on their simulation model.

OpenMOLE is based on a blackbox approach to embbed models based on very different technologies: java / scala / C / C++ / fortran / scilab / octave / netlogo... Once the user model is embedded in the platform, it can be executed according to various parameter samplings, sensitivity analysis, calibration processes... OpenMOLE automatically distributes the numerous executions of the model on a distributed environment specified by the user, such as a cluster or even on the 100,000+ cores available on the European computing grid.

The platform takes care of software installation, files transfert, job failures, rendering the distributed execution entierly transparent by the user.

• Romain Reuillon: Après l'obtention d'un diplôme d'ingénieur en informatique en 2004, puis d'un doctorat en informatique en 2008 intitulé « Simulations stochastiques en environnements distribués / Applications aux grilles de calcul », Romain Reuillon effectue actuellement un post-doctorat à l'Institut des Systèmes Complexes de Paris Île de France sur l'utilisation des environnements de calcul distribué pour l'étude des systèmes complexes.
  

• Mathieu Leclaire: Research engineer in charge of the development of the graphical user interface and features of OpenMOLE (Open MOdeL Experiment), a software platform for building and running workflows on various distributed systems. Developed according to the formalism of OpenMOLE core, this GUI is user-friendly to simplified the organization of experiment designs and to ease the understanding of workflows.

• Video and presentation: Follow this link for a video of the seminar and that link to download the presentation (unzip the file and open 'openmole.html').