Project Description
The project has two overarching goals. The first project goal is to advance the state of the art in SmartNIC training to promote and facilitate broader adoption of SmartNICs among cyberinfrastructure (CI) professionals, contributors, and network owners. The project will develop training material in the form of virtual labs and companion material, including guided experiments and interactive electronic booklets. Virtual labs will enable CI contributors (including developers and researchers) to learn how to implement offloaded applications on various SmartNICs. Virtual labs will also permit CI professionals (including system administrators, research support staff, and facilitators) to learn how to deploy those applications, how to manage SmartNICs, and how to provide effective support. The virtual labs will be deployed on the NSF-funded FABRIC platform and on the Academic Cloud at the University of South Carolina.The second project goal is to incorporate virtual labs into educational curricula and instructional resources. The project will target associate, bachelor, and graduate programs.
Training activities for the two project goals include organizing workshops with CI communities, including national and regional Research and Education Networks; professional development events with the NSF-funded Minority-Serving Cyberinfrastructure Consortium; and train-the-trainer tutorials with centers supporting college instructors and students. Best practices and technical specifications produced by this project are incorporated into NSF’s ACCESS Knowledge Base.
