Symposium on Multicore and New Processing Technologies
August 13-14 2007
A symposium exploring the capabilities and use of new high performance
computing (HPC) technologies took place Aug. 13-14 on the
campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The two-day symposium was hosted by the Arctic Region Supercomputing
Center, a national leader in the ongoing evaluation of current and
next-generation processing technologies to improve the speed, memory
functions and efficiencies of supercomputers. ARSC is a charter member
of the National Science Foundation's Center for High Performance
Reconfigurable Computing (CHPRC).
According to ARSC Chief Scientist Greg Newby, the technology path of
semiconductors coupled with user requirements has created a change in
processing hardware. "Physical limitations and power challenges
have led to the development of multicore processors," he
said. "At the same time, special-purpose processing units for
non-HPC markets are able to provide substantial processing powers
in some applications. These include field programmable gate arrays
(FPGAs), graphical processing units (GPUs) and gaming processors such
as the CELL BE processor, which can be used as a standalone processor
or as an application acceleration co-processor."
Participants in the symposium addressed the following questions:
How do applications scale with the multiplicity of cores, envisioning near-future petaFLOP systems with multiple cores in each CPU socket?
What hardware limitations and features, such as memory bandwidth and shared cache, impact scalability of applications?
How do graphical, gaming and reconfigurable processors compare in real-world applications?
Are existing operating systems adequate to deal with those technologies? If not, what is missing and how can shortcomings be addressed?
What programming tools are currently available for those technologies, and what new tools are needed?
"In order to address these and other questions of relevance to the
high performance computing community, ARSC is taking the lead once
again in this area by holding this summer symposium on multicore and
new processing technologies," Newby said.
Invited speakers and discussion panels included a number of
experts which addressed these and other issues in greater detail.
Symposium White Paper
As a result of the symposium, the following white paper
was generated:
5:00 End of first day, informal hosted dinner follows
Tuesday August 14
9:00 Panel Discussion
Moderator: Greg Newby
Panelists: Tarek El-Ghazawi, Ed Kornkven , Richard Linderman, Jerry Morris
Format: 10 minutes overview by the moderator, 10 minutes position statement by each panelist, followed by open discussion
Questions to the panelists:
How can we get our money's worth from multicore processors?
How will the role of FPGAs evolve in HPC?
What will be the impact of the wide range of processor and accelerator technologies (with heterogeneous multicores) on
portability and ease of use? What can be done about it?
What are your top five recommendations based on the symposium?
11:00 Symposium Results: open discussion leading to a white paper on the symposium recommendations co-authored by the
speakers
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Adjourn
Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
PO Box 756020, Fairbanks, AK 99775 | voice: 907-450-8600 | email:
