high-performance computing
to that; to rewrite their code in a way that could live with less memory per application and explore a higher level of parallelism, scaling up to roughly 450,000 cores. Not every user is able to follow that path
because not every application is suited to that; therefore we also need a more general- purpose computer to suit the needs of users who are not able to scale their codes to that extreme level.
Could you tell me about the HighQ Club? This seems to really tie in with the concept of highly scaleable systems... Te HighQ Club is designed to get an application across all 28 racks of the Blue Gene Q system. Te initiative has been running for about three years and we have been very surprised by its success. We thought we had nothing to offer and were not able to give a prize; we could only tell users: ‘If you have an application that runs on all 28 racks you can become a member of this club.’
www.scientific-computing.com l
Tis offer seems to be so attractive that
we are overwhelmed by applications for our workshops – where, within a week, we try to bring people up to the standard required for high-end scaling applications. So far we have in the order of 25 applications in the club – that’s 25 applications that have more or less used the full capacity of the Blue Gene system. Of course, the name of the club is closely
related to Blue Gene Q, so the question is what we will do as we know that the Blue Gene line is going to stop at Q! It’s not clear at the moment.
Will the JSC continue to invest in IBM for new supercomputers in the future? Te key point, of course, is that we are usually doing open procurements so we cannot say that we will definitely invest in IBM or any other specific company – this does not mean that we are arbitrarily pricing whatever is on the market but we have to consider that, for our users, its a huge job
@scwmagazine
to port the code from one architecture to another. We will try to achieve some form of
continuity in terms of architecture, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a continuity in terms of vendors. If you look at our past, you’ll see that up to 2004 we were using Cray systems (at that time Cray was more or less a synonym for supercomputing), then in 2004 we started with IBM. However, IBM was not our only choice. Te main reason we have stayed with IBM for so long is the uniqueness of the Blue Gene Q. Tat’s no longer the case – of course, we are still in touch with IBM but we couldn’t say that we will be going with them into the future. We are a member of the OpenPOWER
Consortium but it’s not a natural continuation because programming a GPU is quite different from programming a Blue Gene. Also, you have to choose from what is actually available in terms of technology! l
Norbert Attig is deputy head of JSC; Thomas Eickermann is head of communication systems at JSC
DECEMBER 2016/OCTOBER 2017 27
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