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7/8.12.04 BlueGene/L Workshop

BlueGene/L Workshop
Computing Centre of the University of Groningen
7 & 8 December 2004

A six-rack IBM BlueGene/L Supercomputer consisting of 6144 compute nodes will play an important part in the LOFAR on-line data processing. The machine will be located in the Computing Centre of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The current schedule indicates that the LOFAR BlueGene will be installed in the first quarter of 2005 significantly ahead of the time when streaming data from LOFAR sensors will require immediate and continuous processing. The plan is therefore to stimulate members of the LOFAR consortium, their collaborators and other scientists in the Netherlands to make use of the available computing power of BlueGene that is not needed for the development of the instrument in the period before regular LOFAR observations commence.

Information on how access to BlueGene/L will be organized can be found here.

To familiarise potential users with the properties of BlueGene/L and to help them port their codes to use this new platform efficiently, ASTRON, the Computing Centre of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and IBM jointly organised a two day workshop aimed mainly at users who are familiar with issues related to the optimisation and parallelisation of their codes. Several experienced IBM developers provided details on BlueGene's architecture and (software) infrastructure and to help users assess the potential benefit that they may expect from the LOFAR BlueGene/L.

The programme of the workshop, together with pdf files of the presentations can be found below.

Program and presentations

	Day 1 - Tuesday 7 December 2004

11.00	Harvey Butcher (ASTRON)
	Koos Duppen (RC/Groningen)
11.10	Policy for the use of LOFAR BlueGene/L (20kB)- Eugene de Geus (ASTRON)
11.25	LOFAR Project (streaming data, sensor array issues) Marco de Vos (ASTRON)
12.00	BlueGene/L Introduction (3MB) - Ruud Haring (IBM Research)
	Use of BG/L in LOFAR (400kB) - Bruce Elmegreen (IBM Research)
13.00	Lunch
14.00	BlueGene/L Applications (2.1 MB) - Gyan Bhanot (IBM Research)
15.00	LOFAR Experience with BlueGene/L (6,62 MB)- Kjeld van der Schaaf (ASTRON)
15.45	Break
16.15	RUG RC Presentation (1.8 MB) - Role/Facilities of RC, Visualization - Arnold Meijster (RC/Groningen)
17.00	Introduction to Porting Session on Day 2 (464 KB)- Gyan Bhanot (IBM Research)
17.30	End of Day 1

	Day 2 - Wednesday 8 December 2004

09.00	Case Study 1 – The Linpack Benchmark on BG/L (800 kB)- Burkhard Steinmacher-Burow (IBM Böblingen)
10.15	Porting Applications to the BlueGene/L Platform - Gyan Bhanot (IBM Research)
11.15	Break
11.30	Case Study 2 – FLASH2 on BG/L (3.9 MB) - Katherine Riley (Argonne National Lab)
12.45	Lunch
13.45	Case Study 3 – Large Scale Biomolecular Simulation (1.7 MB) – Frank Suits (IBM Research)
15.00	Round-Up, Future Steps
15.30	End of Workshop

General Information about IBM's BlueGene Programme can be found at:
http://www.research.ibm.com/bluegene

Information on Codes that have been ported to BlueGene:
Two relevant papers from the recent SC2004 Conference held in Pittsburgh PA November 6-12, 2004

Unlocking the Performance of the BlueGene/L Supercomputer
George Almasi, Siddhartha Chatterjee, Alan Gara, John Gunnels et al.
http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2004/schedule/pdfs/pap220.pdf

A Performance and Scalability Analysis of the BlueGene/L Architecture
Kei Davis, Adolfy Hoisie, Greg Johnson, Darren J. Kerbyson, Mike Lang, Scott Pakin, Fabrizio Petrini
http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2004/schedule/pdfs/pap302.pdf

More information about the BlueGene Consortium can be found at:
http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/bgconsortium