1. What’s a Supercomputer Good for Anyway? Ruth Poole – IBM Software Engineer Blue Gene Control System

2. Overview Applications –Current Customers –Future Directions Architecture Foundations Hardware Comparisons Trends

3. Application Categories – Current Customers Government and University –Nuclear stockpile stewardship –Other research Computational Fluid Dynamics – CFD –Aerodynamics – aerospace, automotive, engine design –Weather/climate modeling Physics / Astronomy –QCD – Quantum Chromodynamics –Flash – simulate supernovae explosions –LOFAR – radio telescope consisting of many small receivers Biomedical –Computational chemistry –Drug discovery –DNA sequencing and search Others –Finance –Oil / Gas exploration

4. NAMD - NAnoscale Molecular Dynamics Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group (TCB) and Parallel Programming Laboratory (PPL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Simulate systems of millions of atoms Use to build models of cellular processes Current goal: model one micro-second of cell behavior

5. Blue Brain - EPFL EPFL-IBM joint research project to create a cellular level, software replica of the Neocortical Column Phase 1, rat brain with 10,000 neuron Neocortical Column with automatically generated, biologically accurate neurons completed November 26, 2007 Study its function and dysfunction and to lay the foundation for large scale modeling of the mammalian brain

6. Materials Science Blue Waters IBM / NSF collaboration project for open research University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign planned for 2011 Design a substance from atoms that meets specific parameters for conductivity and strength

7. Robot Surgeons Laser prostate surgery on a dog Real-time data from MRI used to guide laser Computer in Austin, Dog in Houston TACC Lonestar, #38 on Top500.org

8. Simulated Plants Computer model that mimics the process of evolution. First model to simulate every step of the photosynthetic process. Researchers have built a better plant, one that produces more leaves and fruit without needing extra fertilizer. University of Illinois; Photo by Don Hamerman

9. Background and Definitions Processors (Nodes) –Multicore – more than one processor on a chip, dual = 2, quad = 4, etc. –Hybrid – a main processor with one or more secondary processors for specific computations (aka. accelerator) “Macro” Architecture –Massively Parallel Processing system (MPP) – Supercomputer with nodes, memory, networking tightly integrated –Cluster – A network of commodity machines connected by a network Interconnect (between nodes) –Crossbar – all nodes connected through crossbar –Mesh/Torus – nodes connected in a grid –Tree – nodes connected in a (fat) tree

10. Hardware Comparisons IBM Road Runner IBM Blue Gene L/P Sun Constellation Cray XT5/h Cluster Systems Top500.org

11. IBM Roadrunner # 1 – 1 PetaFlop Hybrid blades 1-AMD Dual-core Opteron 1.8 GHz / 2-PowerXCell 8i 3.2 Ghz 6,948 / 12,960 processors Infiniband and Gigabit Ethernet Los Alamos

12. “I know how to make 4 horses pull a cart - I don't know how to make 1024 chickens do it.” Enrico Clementi - former IBM fellow

13. IBM Blue Gene L/P # 2, 3, 6, 9, others – 478 TFlops / 450 TFlops Large number of modest processors PowerPC 440/450 – 700/850 Mhz 212,992 / 163,840 cores 3-D torus Communication over the torus network Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Argonne, NCAR, others

14. Sun Constellation – Ranger # 4 – 326 TFlops AMD Quad-core Opteron 2 GHz Blades 62,976 cores Full-Clos Infiniband Texas Advanced Computing Center

15. Cray XT5 “Adapt the system to the application” Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2.1 GHz 30,976 (XT4 - Oak Ridge National Lab, # 5 – 205 TFlops) Cray SeaStar2 – 3-D Torus XT5h – hybrid processors –AMD Opteron –Configurable FPGA accelerator Oak Ridge (planned)

16. Clusters 400 of the Top500.org Many different vendors, configurations Low cost, commodity systems More management tools becoming available Slower communication between nodes

17. Trends Multicore – more processors on a chip Hybrid processors –Accelerators for specific kinds of computation –More difficult to take advantage of “Greenness” – Green500.org Liquid cooling – Cray XT5 planned for Oak Ridge More tools and systems integration –Blue Waters –Microsoft Windows HPC Deskside supercomputers? –IBM BG/S –Cray CX1 Mainstream customers – not just for research anymore –Financial –Engineering

18. References Overview of Recent Supercomputers - 2007 Edition http://top500.org/2007_overview_recent_supercomputer s http://top500.org/2007_overview_recent_supercomputer s Cray XT5 product brochure http://www.cray.com/Products/XT/Product/Specification s.aspx http://www.cray.com/Products/XT/Product/Specification s.aspx Sun Constellation system information http://www.sun.com/servers/hpc/sunconstellationsystem / http://www.sun.com/servers/hpc/sunconstellationsystem / IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 52, Number 1/2, 2008 “TACC Supercomputer Performs Laser Cancer Surgery on Canine” HPCWire, May 27, 2008, Aaron Dubrow “Researchers successfully simulate photosynthesis and design a better leaf” News Bureau: University of Illinois at Urbana-Chapaign, November 2007, Diana Yates The Blue Brain Project http://bluebrain.epfl.chhttp://bluebrain.epfl.ch Blue Waters http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/BlueWaters/

19. Background and Definitions Architectural classes –SIMD – single instruction, multiple data (vectorprocessors) – multiple processors in lock- step, each with its own set of data –MIMD – multiple instruction, multiple data – the bulk of High Performance Computing (HPC) systems Memory –Shared – all nodes have access to same memory –Distributed – each node has its own memory –NUMA – non-uniform memory access – logically shared, physically distributed Interconnect (between nodes) –Crossbar – all nodes connected through crossbar –Mesh/Torus – nodes connected in a grid –Tree – nodes connected in a (fat) tree