Seminar given at “IST Lunch Bunch”
Tuesday November 2, 2010
12:00 PM
105 Annenberg

Abstract:
Moore’s law works for semiconductor-based detectors and there is an increasing flood of data being generated in astronomy, high energy physics, biology, and other sciences. Computation is essential for both (1) making predictions from theory and (2) the analysis of data from experiments. Is there a way to architecturally balance both needs in a high performance computing (HPC) system?

HPC systems are typically constructed from easily available parts, just organized differently and scaled to process extreme workloads. The most power efficient petascale machine as of 2010 is Roadrunner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Another interesting machine is the Apple iPad which uses very low power System on a Chip/Package on Package technologies. This talk explores the question of “what happens when you cross Roadrunner with iPads”? The result is a high level of integration between computation and storage on a single server blade, called a Flashblade, with 100x-1,000x performance improvements for some data-centric applications. The Flashblade architecture, expected performance, programming, and scaling with advancing technology are discussed.

(PDF)

Mark Stalzer

High performance computing systems are typically constructed from easily available parts, just organized differently and scaled to process extreme workloads. The most power efficient petascale machine as of 2010 is Roadrunner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Another interesting machine is the Apple iPad which uses very low power System on a Chip/Package on Package technologies. This talk explores the question of “what happens when you cross Roadrunner with iPads”?

(PDF)

Moderator:

• Mark Stalzer, CACR

Panelists:

• Thomas Sterling, Louisiana State University
• Allan Snavely, San Diego Supercomputer Center
• Stephen Poole, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• William Camp, Intel Corporation

Abstract:
Over the next few years there are two boundary conditions that should constrain computer systems architecture: commodity components and applications performance. Yet, these two seem strangely disconnected. Perhaps we need some human optimization, as opposed to repeated use of Moore’s Law. Our panelists have been given a set of standard components that are on announced vendor roadmaps. They also each get to make one mystery component of no more complexity than a commercially available FPGA. The applications are HPL for linear algebra, Map-Reduce for databases, and a sequence matching algorithm for biology. The panelists have 10 minutes to disclose their systems architecture and mystery component, and estimate performance for the three applications at 1MW of power.

C S Chang, S Ku, P Diamond, M Adams, R Barreto, Y Chen, J Cummings, E D’Azevedo, G Dif-Pradalier, S Ethier, L Greengard, T S Hahm, F Hinton, D Keyes, S Klasky, Z Lin, J Lofstead, G Park, S Parker, N Podhorszki, K Schwan, A Shoshani, D Silver, M Wolf, P Worley, H Weitzner, E Yoon and D Zorin

M Adams, S Ku, P Worley, E D’Azevedo, J Cummings and C S Chang

Paul Springer, Ed Upchurch, Mark Stalzer, Sean Mauch, John McCorquodale, Jan Lindheim, and Michael Burl

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Thomas Sterling and Maciej Brodowicz

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Roxana E. Diaconescu, Bradford Chamberlain and Hans P. Zima (2005)

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Thomas Sterling and Maciej Brodowicz

(PDF)

Dan M. Davis, Garth D. Baer and Thomas D. Gottschalk

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