Chin Guok has been named as Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Guok will lead the Planning and Innovation Department while taking on the additional role of CTO.
Guok has been with ESnet for more than 25 years and has led many innovative projects during that time. In 2006, Guok conceived and led the On-Demand Secure Circuits and Advance Reservation System (OSCARS) project which won the R&D 100 award as well as the Department of Energy Secretary’s Honor award.
“Chin has long demonstrated leadership and innovation across the global research and experimentation ecosystem,” said Inder Monga, executive director of ESnet. “It is gratifying to see him take on this more prominent role as well as realize his technical vision and implement strategy at ESnet.”
More recently, Guok led the design for ESnet’s next-generation network, ESnet6, which launched in early October 2022. He was also the lead in delivering the market-leading ESnet High Touch project and the in-network cache deployment, along with being deeply engaged with the SENSE/Rucio collaboration and the ExaFEL project. Guok is also a sought-after speaker internationally and most recently gave a keynote address at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) anniversary event.
“I am honored to be asked to take on this new position at ESnet,” said Chin Guok. “ESnet has long been at the forefront of scientific networking and I am excited to have a larger role in guiding its future success.”
Guok’s research interests include high-performance networking and network protocols, dynamic network resource provisioning, network tuning issues, and hybrid network traffic engineering. Guok received an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Arizona in 1997 and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pacific in 1991.
Quantum networks may provide new capabilities for information processing and transport, potentially transformative for science, economy and natural science uses. These capabilities, provably impossible for existing “classical” physics based networking technologies, are of key interest to many U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) mission areas, such as climate and Earth system science, astronomy, materials discovery, and life sciences, etc.
In August of 2021, the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) division of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science announced a funding award for several quantum information system projects in support of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative. One of these projects is QUANT-NET (Quantum Application Network Testbed for Novel Entanglement Technology), a collaboration between Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, University of Innsbruck, and Caltech.
QUANT-NET research is focused on building a software-controlled quantum computing network, linking Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. ESnet executive director Inder Monga is the project principal investigator. The idea for QUANT-NET was born out of the 2020 DOE Quantum Internet Blueprint workshop, where representatives from DOE national laboratories, universities, industry, and other U.S. agencies came together to define a roadmap for building the first nationwide quantum Internet.
In this post, Dr. Wenji Wu, an ESnet networking researcher who is part of the QUANT-NET team, describes what future capabilities quantum networking may provide and why researchers believe quantum networks will transform scientific activities.
Why Quantum Networks?
In the past thirty years, significant progress has been made in the fields of quantum technologies. The combination of quantum mechanics and information science forms a new area – quantum information science (QIS). In the broad context of QIS, quantum networks have an important role for the physical implementation of quantum computing, communication, and metrology. Quantum networks are envisioned to achieve novel capabilities that are provably impossible using classical networks and could be transformative to science, the economy, and national security. These novel capabilities range from cryptography, sensing and metrology, distributed systems, to secure quantum cloud computing.
A few examples of this include:
Secure Quantum Communication: Quantum networks take advantage of the laws of quantum physics (i.e., superposition and entanglement) to transmit information, potentially achieving a level of privacy and security that is impossible to achieve with today’s Internet. See Figure 1a.
A Quantum Network of Clocks: Recent research shows that a quantum network of atomic clocks can result in a substantial boost of the overall precision if multiple clocks are properly connected by quantum mechanical means. Compared to a single clock, the ultimate precision will improve as much as 1/K, where K is the number of clocks. If the same clocks are connected via a classical network, the precision scales as much as 1/SQRT(K). Ultimately, a quantum network of atomic clocks can surpass the Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) to reach the ultimate precision allowed by quantum theory — the Heisenberg limit. See Figure 1b.
Upscaling Quantum Computing: An individual quantum computer is typically limited in size. Connected by quantum networks, multiple quantum computers can work together as one big quantum computer to address larger problems. See Figure 1c.
Quantum networks are distributed systems of quantum systems, which are able to exchange quantum bits (qubits) and generate and distribute entangled quantum states. As illustrated by Figure 2, a quantum network conceptually consists of three essential quantum components:
Quantum nodes, which are physical quantum systems (e.g., trapped ions, quantum dots, Nitrogen-vacancy centers) connected to the quantum network. Well-characterized matter qubits are typically defined and created from these physical quantum systems. Quantum information is generated, processed, and stored locally by matter qubits in quantum nodes. Matter qubits, often referred to as stationary qubits, are typically isolated from the surrounding environment to minimize decoherence and facilitate various quantum operations.
Quantum channels, which connect physically separated quantum components in the quantum network and transfer quantum states faithfully from place to place using the flying qubits. Optical fibers and free-space communications are typically implemented as quantum channels because they have a reduced chance of decoherence and loss. Photons with polarization or time-bin encoding are the flying qubit of choice. The implementation of quantum channels also requires that information encoded in a stationary qubit is reliably transferred to a flying qubit, and vice versa.
Quantum repeaters, which allow the end-to-end generation of quantum entanglement, and thus, the end-to-end transmission of qubits by using quantum teleportation. Quantum repeaters typically implement entanglement-related operations such as entanglement swapping and entanglement purification.
Figure 2: A quantum network consists of three essential quantum systems
In quantum networks, qubits cannot be copied due to the no-cloning theorem, which forbids the creation of identical copies of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. Therefore, qubits can not be physically transmitted over long distances without being hindered by the effects of signal loss and decoherence inherent to most transport mediums such as optical fiber. However, qubits can share a special relation known as entanglement. Entangled qubits have interesting non-local properties, even if they are located at distant nodes. Consuming an entangled qubit pair, a data qubit can be sent deterministically to a remote node. Entanglement is the fundamental building block of quantum networks.
As illustrated in Figure 3, key entanglement-related operations include:
Entanglement Purification: Multiple low-quality entanglements can be purified into a high-quality entanglement.
Entanglement Swapping: Long-distance entanglement can be built from shorter segments, with flying qubits transmitted locally.
Teleportation: to enable the end-to-end transmission of qubits.
Figure 3: Key entanglement-related operations
Classic networks typically concern the performance metrics such as bandwidth, throughput, and latency. Likewise, quantum networks care for performance metrics related to quantum operations. Critical quantum quality metrics include entanglement generation rate, decoherence rate, and fidelity. In quantum networks, fidelity is a key indicator to characterize the quality of quantum states or operations. In general, a minimum fidelity (Fmin) is required to support quantum operations.
It is envisioned that quantum networks will operate in parallel with classic networks. Quantum networks are not meant to replace classic networks but rather to supplement them with quantum capabilities.
Current Status
Today, quantum networks are in their infancy. Like the Internet, quantum networks are expected to undergo different stages of research and development until they reach their full functionality. There are many promising R&D efforts underway looking to develop quantum network technologies. The DOE unveiled a quantum Internet blueprint in 2020 to accelerate research in quantum science and technology, with the emphasis on the creation of a quantum Internet.
Jessy Schmit came to ESnet from Pilot Fiber in New York, NY, where for the last six years, she was the Senior Manager of Network Operations and Support. Before Pilot Fiber, Jessy worked at a creative advertising agency and spent several years in the arts as a performer and director. Her background includes strategic leadership in marketing, customer experience, design, and technology.
Schmit recently earned her Master’s Degree in Technology Management from New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.
Originally from Seattle, she currently resides in Brooklyn and spent seven years in the San Francisco Bay Area getting her undergraduate degree. She looks forward to reconnecting with her West Coast roots at ESnet.
Question 1: What brought you to ESnet?
I had the opportunity to work with Jay Stewart at my last company, his recommendation and an instant connection to the people I met during the interview process made the decision a no-brainer. ESnet’s mission and values are something I can really get behind!
Question 2: What is the most exciting thing in your field right now?
I nerd out on customer experience and process improvements, so I am excited about the modernization of IT back office, technical support, and self-service for engineering organizations. Increasing automation strategically without sacrificing the beneficial human elements of customer and end-user support can speed execution and ease the burden on engineering and support teams. Network automations can also reduce error and improve availability and resilience. In other sectors, specifically healthcare, we’re seeing how self-service, increased resiliency and the improved application of technology can make people feel more connected to their provider or service.
Question 3: What excites you most about your role?
The people! The candid and thoughtful approach to questions and discussion was really refreshing during my interview process. And now I have the opportunity to work beside those totally awesome ESnet folks everyday and they’ve surpassed my expectations. I am excited to continue collaborating with such a talented and dedicated team of performers across the organization and learning all I can in my new environment. Working to further such a worthy mission makes it pretty easy to feel passionate about my new job.
Question 4: What challenges/opportunities are you looking forward to tackling?
I’m excited to figure out what motivates my team. I’ve found that what drives an engineer is wildly different from what motivates an accountant or a professor or chef (or any other role). Creating an environment where everyone feels supported and enabled to perform exemplary work that betters the larger organizational goals but also, ideally, their own development goals, is a focus for me.
Question 5: How do you feel your past experience will transfer to your role at ESnet?
Looking at the typical pedigree of a team lead in technology or science, the benefits of a background in the arts might not be immediately obvious. While traditional technical skills may get a candidate in the door, it’s really the interpersonal and communication skills that allow them to thrive in their role. Entering the realm of technology and science from another discipline provides me with a unique perspective that can add diversity to the viewpoints of the team. My previous role was at a startup ISP in Manhattan and the pace of progress on our network operations and engineering meant I had to be agile, speedy, creative, and responsive – around the clock – to emergencies and customer needs. I’m hopeful the transfer of my work ethic, adaptability, and empathy will allow me to provide individualized support for my team(s) and future customers.
Question 6: What book, movie, or podcast would you recommend?
I could talk about movies for days, but I’d say “KIMI” for a little tech industry suspense. I would also recommend “The Woman King” for some stellar performances and an inspiring story, and “Severance” (TV show) for a fascinating, and sometimes super funny, dystopian drama.
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC22) is just around the corner and ESnet staff will be there to connect, learn, and share their knowledge with the HPC community. SC22 will take place November 13 – 18 in Dallas, Texas, and is primarily in person for the first time since 2019.
Here are some staff highlights:
Sunday, November 13
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM INDIS 2022: Annual International Workshop on Innovating the Network for Data-Intensive Science, Mariam Kiran, Anu Mercian, Room C156
8:55 AM INDIS 2022: Panel Discussion: Network Research Exhibition: the Future of Networking and Computing with Big Data Streams, Tom Lehman, C
3:30 PM INDIS 2022 Featured Technical Talk: Quantum Communication: A Physics Experiment of a Network Paradigm Shift, Inder Monga, Room C156
4:10 PM Paper: EJ-FAT Joint ESnet JLab FPGA Accelerated Transport Load Balancer, Stacey Sheldon, Yatish Kumar, Michael Goodrich, Graham Heyes, Room C156
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Demo: Global Petascale to Exascale Workflows for Data Intensive Science, Mariam Kiran, DOE Booth #1600
3:15 PM Featured DOE Booth Talk: ESnet6: How ESnet’s Next-Generation Infrastructure Will Enable Integrated Research Initiative Workflows, Inder Monga, DOE Booth #1600
Wednesday, November 16
11:00 AM SC22 Network Research Exhibition, SC22-NRE-15, SENSE and Rucio/FTS/XRootD Interoperation, Tom Lehman, Xi Yang, Caltech Booth #2820
2:00 PM SC22 Network Research Exhibition, SC22-NRE-13, AutoGOLE/SENSE: End-to-End Network Services and Workflow Integration, Tom Lehman, Xi Yang, Caltech Booth #2820
Thursday, November 17
10:00 AM Demo: Janus Container Management and the EScp Data Mover, Ezra Kissel, Charles Shiflett, Md Arrifuzzaman, DOE Booth #1600
The Department of Energy’s Office of Project Assessment recently issued its final CD-4 Review Report on the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)’s ESnet6 upgrade project. The review, held on July 12 – 13, 2022, and conducted at the request of Barbara Helland, Associate Director of Science for Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), assessed the project’s readiness to proceed to the approval of project completion. The project completed all threshold key performance parameters (KPPs) six months ahead of the early finish date, two years ahead of the CD-4 Level 1 milestone date, and well under budget. The committee assessed that the project was ready to proceed to CD-4 approval, which was achieved on July 29, 2022. The Final Closeout report and Lessons Learned are being submitted next week within the specified 90-day window.
“I want to congratulate the entire ESnet organization especially the ESnet6 project director, Kate Mace, and the project team,” said Inder Monga, executive director of ESnet. “When the team set out to deliver on a project scope as vast as the ESnet6 launch, we did not imagine a global pandemic would interrupt the process. Despite that, the team delivered the entire project ahead of the deadline and, even with supply-chain issues, managed to complete the scope below the projected budget. Most of the team attended the ESnet6 Unveiling Event on October 11 and heard their accomplishments praised by the lab directorate as well as congresspeople and DOE staff.”
The committee commended the project team for their “unique and innovative approach” in completing the project objectives and complimented ESnet for their agility in following through with the project scope while dealing with the difficult environment generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report stated that COVID-19 restrictions, limitations, and supply-chain issues presented “no significant impact” on the project’s critical path. The report also identified the distributed nature of operations and ESnet’s support for a remote workforce as an “invaluable” approach and a best practice to be shared beyond the DOE complex.
The final reports required for the official Project Closeout will be submitted to DOE this week. The ESnet team has continued to keep up the pace as they work toward additional enhancements to the ESnet6 Facility. “The #ESnet6Week festivities the week of October 9 energized the team. Not only were the project accomplishments celebrated at the ESnet6 Unveiling event, but the team also heard firsthand about the impact the project has already had on scientific discovery,” said Kathryn Mace, the ESnet6 project director, and Network Engineering group lead. “Hearing about the expansion of scientific collaborations made easier with the ESnet6 network and automated operations provided the team with newfound motivation to keep moving full speed ahead. ESnet6 sets the foundation for global scientific innovation over the next 10 years.”
The ESnet6 project team, DOE staff, IPR Committee, and members of the Berkeley Lab directorate during the final CD-4 IPR closeout session.
Scientists at Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories are collaborating on the next generation of integrated Earth climate models using Exascale Computing Project computers and simulation models. The Earth System Grid Federation program is building vast simulation models using data collected about our planet at all levels, from space to far below the surface. Predictions from these models are vital to our understanding of climate, ocean, and other complex systems that make life possible. Read more about this and ESnet’s role in this important international science conversation in a new phys.org article from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Visualization from the Earth System Model, one component of the Earth System Grid Federation program. ESnet provides the data connectivity necessary to stitch teams and computers at different labs together. Credit: LLNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
The ESnet6 Unveiling Ceremony is 4 days away! Come celebrate our new network and the great science we support, like the Earth System Grid Federation. Join us from 9 a.m. – 12 a.m., 11 October on https://streaming.lbl.gov.
We’re just a few days away from the ESnet6 unveiling and Confab22!
Here’s a great video interview with Ann Almgren, Senior Scientist in CCSE and the Department Head of the Applied Mathematics Department in the Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division at Berkeley Lab. In it she discusses her research into wind power generation/distribution, and how she will use ESnet6.
Ann Almgren, Berkeley Lab
To watch the unveiling of ESnet6 and learn more about Ann’s research, join us 11 October from 900AM – 12 PM PT at streaming.lbl.gov!
ESnet6 marks a new era of our high-performance network supporting the needs of scientists. We’re able to handle massive flows of data in a reliable, nimble way, and we can specifically configure our setup to match the needs of individual experiments. The upgrade ensures that ESnet is ready to support the future of science today, including the significant increase in the amount of data produced by scientific experiments and the increasingly complex needs of scientists and the way they interact with our network.
Come watch the ESnet6 unveiling ceremony 9AM -12 PM PT, October 11, at streaming.lbl.gov!
The 31st NORDUnet Conference will take place in Reykjavik, Iceland from September 13-15, 2022.
ESnet staff will also be in attendance at the Special Interest Group on Next Generation Networking (SIG-NGN)on September 12, 2022, the day before the NORDUnet Conference.
Here’s where you can find ESnet team’s talks during these events:
Monday, September 12, 2022: SIG-NGN
The next generation NREN lightning talks 09:05 – 10:30am GMT
The lightning talks will feature two presentations from ESnet:
ESnet Effort to Build Upon the NML and MRML – John MacAuley
LHC Next Generation Requirements Gathering – Eli Dart
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Future network architectures. Technological change to support data moving / data planes 11:00am – 12:30pm GMT
This session will start with 10-minute presentations, including two by ESnet staff:
ESnet7 – Chin Guok
Underlay Packet Inspection, Making Traffic Engineering Decisions at L2 – Yatish Kumar
These talks will be followed by a panel discussion.
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How do we stitch and share our L1-L3+ networks to introduce better and new services 12:00pm – 3:30pm GMT
This session includes a series of short talks, including:
Real Time Data Processing Requirements – Yatish Kumar
Yatish Kumar will also host a discussion on future networking technologies from =2:00pm – 3:20pm GMT
Tuesday, September 13, 2022: NORDUnet Conference
The ESnet6 Approach to Network Orchestration and Automation 11:00am – 12:30pm GMT | Track 1 / Room: Silfurberg B
Speaker: Scott Richmond
Abstract: Network Orchestration is a defining factor in next generation networks, enabling operators to deliver more consistent and reliable services. ESnet has leveraged a combination of internally developed tools, open source software, and commercial software to orchestrate and automate network configuration deployment. This approach has enabled rapid deployment of new network services, as well as ensuring that configuration standards are well enforced when deploying network services.
During this talk, we will provide a brief history of automation at ESnet, dive into what our goals were for orchestration and automation in the ESnet6 project, and describe the technology and process that we used to meet those goals. Finally, we will discuss the hurdles encountered and lessons we learned along the way while developing this tooling.
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Eli Dart was part of the technical program committee and is the chair for the HPC session, taking place in Track 2 / Room: Rima from 2:00 – 3:30 pm GMT.
Wednesday, September 14, 2022: NORDUnet Conference
Experimenting with Teleportation Based Physical Layer for the Network: QUANT-NET 1:30pm – 3:00pm GMT | Track 1 / Room: Silfurberg B
Speaker: Inder Monga
Abstract: QUANT-NET takes an application-centric and systems-based approach to building a Quantum Internet testbed. The main thrust of this effort is to build a three-node distributed quantum computing testbed between two sites, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the University of California Berkeley (UCB) connected with an entanglement swapping substrate over optical fiber and managed by a quantum network protocol stack. We will implement the most basic building block of distributed quantum computing by teleporting a controlled-NOT gate between two nodes. This approach will enable research, prototyping, measurement and testing of the entire quantum network stack from physical layer to the application. The talk will describe our proposed testbed and progress.
ESnet’s Chris Cummings from our Orchestration and Core Data team was asked to present at the industry event “Networking Field Day: Service Provider”.
Networking Field Day (NFD) is a unique event in which industry professionals are invited to join a panel of delegates who are presented with new products and offerings from networking vendors. These presentations then follow an open format where delegates can ask questions of the vendors and understand more about the products being discussed.
For this particular instance of NFD, Chris was invited as a community member to present on how ESnet has built service orchestration and intent-based networking tooling, which allows us to abstract our service offerings from the technical implementation details that compose them. This is a topic that has a lot of mystique and buzz-words surrounding it in the networking industry, but this presentation contains concrete examples and demonstrations of the software that ESnet uses daily.
The talk Chris gave explored ESnet’s approach to building a service orchestration software suite. He also gave a few demonstrations of the software in action. This presentation is not an exhaustive explanation of how to build your own intent-based networking environment, but rather an example and overview of a real-world stack that is being used in a production network today and the principles behind it.
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