CHReME: A Web Based Application Execution Tool for using HPC Resources

Abstract- High Performance Computing (HPC) Systems are used to solve highly challenging, complex, time consuming, and advanced computational problems. HPC has become the workhorse for carrying out research and development activities for scientific and social advancement. For using HPC, scientists and researchers required expertise in Linux and HPC, which posed a serious challenge for the scientists in focusing on their core research area. This meant that the scientist was now burdened with the computational aspects and workings of HPC. Coming to the rescue, the HPC Solutions Group at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), India developed a web based resource management and monitoring engine CHReME: C-DAC’s HPC Resource Management Engine. CHReME provides a layer of abstraction to shield the end-user from the complexity of accessing HPC cluster resources while enabling them to concentrate on their core research/scientific area. CHReME’s intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and web based Unix/Linux shell makes clusters of different magnitude easy to use, manage and monitor. CHReME enables the HPC users to access the cluster resources from any remote location using a web browser viz Mozilla Firefox, CHROME, Internet Explorer. The portal is engineered to address the needs of novice as well as expert system users working in different scientific domains. This paper focuses on CHReME as the cluster resources and job management portal for utilizing High Performance Computing resources. With CHReME in place, the user does not have to learn the computational aspects of HPC thus giving the freedom to focus more on his/her core research area