Commodity-Based Supercomputing Collaboration

These pages contain information about a series of workshops whose aim is to foster a multi-laboratory, multi-national collaboration to explore the use of computer system constructed from commodity-based components.

FOURTH WORKSHOP ON DISTRIBUTED SUPERCOMPUTERS

March 9-10, 2000
Parc St. Charles Hotel
New Orleans, LA, USA

Previous Workshops

Third Workshop
March 22-24, 1999

Second Workshop
March 30 - April 1 1998

First Workshop
June 25-27, 1997

Sponsor: Sandia National Laboratories
Chair: Bill Camp, 505-845-7655
Technical Chair: Neil Pundit, 505-845-7601
Administrative Contact: Carmela Andrade, 505-844-2345

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More pictures from the Fourth Workshop.

This year’s program included:

succinct visions from leaders;
Technology Sessions exploring burning issues;
Panels exposing the controversies with brief statements (of <5 minutes each) and vigorous audience participation;
an Integration & Testing Technology Session delving into such issues as installation, testing, operational readiness and support;
an Applications Panel illustrating successes and drawing attention to the challenges ahead;
a Usability Panel looking into such success metrics as reliability, availability, and modifiability;
a CRYSTAL BALL session projecting the future of heterogeneous clusters, integrating SMPs, Petaflops computing, and web-supercomputing.

We concluded by summarizing the highlights of the two-day activities, and getting a program committee to engage us in planning for the 5^th Workshop in 2001. This was an immense immersion experience.

Detailed Program

Wednesday, March 8, 2000

6 –8 pm

Registration, Check-in, and Socials--hosted by Compaq

Thursday, March 9, 2000

7:00 am	Registration
7:30 am	Continental Breakfast
8:00 am	VISIONARY SESSION (Succinct Vision Statement from Leaders) Hallucinations about Petaflops Commodity Supercomputing Swiss Vision of Supercomputing The Software Revolution The Future of Top500	(15 min. each) Paul Messina (DOE) Bill Camp(SNL) Michel Deville (EPFL/ETHZ) John Reynders (LANL) Jack Dongarra (ORNL)
10:00 am	Break
10:30 am	CLUSTER UPDATE SESSION (An Update on the Status of the Organization's Clusters) Swiss Tx: A Commodity MPI computing solution Cplant^TM Update Chiba City LANL Cluster LLNL Cluster ORNL Computing Resources LBL Cluster	(10 min. each) Ralf Gruber -- organizer Ralf Gruber Rolf Riesen, SNL Rajeev Thakur Pete Beckman Mark Seager Al Geist Bill Saphir
11:30 am	INTERCONNECT TECHNOLOGY SESSION Myrinet Quadrics VIA Tnet Scaleable (in)Coherent Interface Gigabit Ethernet	Roland Paul (SCS) -- organizer Barney Maccabe (UNM) David Greenberg (NSA) Bill Saphir (LBL) Roland Paul (SCS) Ron Minnich (LANL) David Turner (Ames)
12:30 pm	Lunch
1:30 pm	INTEGRATION & TESTING TECHNOLOGY SESSION Testing and Evaluation Integration and Testing Technology ACL Extreme Linux Clusters Support and Maintenance	Jim Tomkins (SNL) -- organizer Greg Lindahl (UVA) John Noe Susan Coghlan (LANL) Manuel Vigil (LANL)
3:00 pm	Break
3:30 pm	OS, MESSAGE PASSING & RUNTIME TOOLS SESSION LLNL OS, Message Passing & Runtime Tools ANL OS, Message Passing & Runtime Tools Run-Time MPI Softtech OS, Message Passing & Runtime Tools Linux & HPC	Ron Brightwell (SNL) -– organizer Mary Zosel (LLNL) Rajeev Thakur (ANL) Pete Beckman (LANL) Tony Skjellum (MPI Softtech) Marc Snir (IBM Watson Center)
5:00 pm	Social Hour--hosted by MPI Software Technology

Friday, March 10, 2000

7:30 am	Continental Breakfast
8:00 am	Scalable IO PANEL LLNL SGPFS Requirements, Expectations and Experiences Striped File Parallel I/O System for Swiss-Tx IO Challenges for the DOE Labs Scalable, Global, Parallel Systems as Distributed Run-Time Environments for Resource Management Vision for System and Resource Management of the Swiss-Tx class of Supercomputers	Art Hale (SNL) -- organizer Mark Seager (LLNL) Emin Gabrielyan, EPFL/ETHZ Lee Ward Rajeev Thakur (ANL) Steve Chapin (Syracuse Univ.) Josef Nemecek (EPFL)
9:00 am	APPLICATIONS PANEL: SUCCESSES & CHALLENGES Cluster-based Visualization Climate Electromagnetic and Spaceborne Applications on Clusters Cluster Issues for Visualization Applications Industrial Seismic Imaging on Commodity Supercomputers A Minimalist View of Clusters An application-based measure of cluster success	Sudip Dosanjh (SNL) -- organizer Dino Pavlakos (SNL) Leslie Hart (NOAA) Dan Katz (NASA) Randy Frank (LLNL) Scott Morton (Amerada Hess) Steve Plimpton (SNL) Mark Sawley (EPFL)
10:00 am	Break
10:30 am	USABILITY PANEL Opening Remarks A Litany on Usability: A mostly users view LLNL Perspective Los Alamos Perspective Ames Lab Perspective Summary	Ann Hodges (SNL) -- organizer Ann Hodges (SNL) Dave Evensky (SNL) Mark Seager (LLNL) MaryDell Nochumson (LANL) David Turner (Ames) Ann Hodges (SNL)
11:30 am	CRYSTAL BALL PANEL Summary Heterogeneous Distributed Computing Research Supercomputing: Heterogeneous Clusters Web Influences Rapid Paths to Petaflops Computing and Beyond	Michael Levine (PSC) and Dona Crawford (SNL) -- organizers Al Geist (ORNL) David Greenberg (NSA) Art Hale (SNL) Tom Sterling (NASA/Caltech/JPL)
12:30 pm	Lunch
1:30 pm	Summary: What did we hear? Challenges for 2001 planning.	Neil Pundit and Chairs of Sessions and Panels
2:00 pm	Planning for 2001 Audience participation is sought in planning for the workshop in 2001. The host for 2001 is ORNL, represented by Al Geist. It will be held in the USA around March 2001. Al listened to some suggestions for possible sites, and will seek a consensus. While many praised the New Orleans workshop, it was suggested that greater audience participation should be a goal in the future. The following volunteered to serve on the Program Committee for 2001: Al Geist Neil Pundit Pete Beckman Terri Quinn Ralf Gruber Bill Saphir
3:00 pm	Adjourn

Participants by Organizations (*unable to attend):

Abba Technologies: Bill Boas
Amerada Hess: Scott Morton
Ames: David Turner
ANL: Rick Stevens*, Rajeev Thakur
Compaq: Tad Dodson, Glen Rowe, Ivan Sipos, Lenore Albright
Cray, Inc: Bob Numrich
DOE: Paul Messina, Ed Oliver, Fred Johnson
EPFL/ETHZ: Ralf Gruber, Michel Deville, Michel Jaunin, Emin Gabrielyan, Mark Sawley, Josef Nemecek
IBM Watson Center: Marc Snir
LANL: John Reynders, Pete Beckman, Susan Coghlan, Ron Minnich, Manuel Vigil*, MaryDell Nochumson
LBL: Bill Saphir, Adrian Wong
LLNL: Terri Quinn*, Mark Seager, Mary Zosel, Randy Frank
MPI Softtech: Tony Skjellum, Matt Gleeson
NASA: Tom Sterling, Dan Katz
NOAA/Forecast Systems Laboratories: Leslie Hart
NSA: David Greenberg
ORNL: Al Geist, Jack Dongarra
PSC/CMU: Michael Levine, John Kochmar
SCS: Roland Paul, Martin Frey
SNL: Bill Camp, Dona Crawford, Art Hale, Neil Pundit, Sudip Dosanjh, Rolf Riesen, Ron Brightwell, Jim Tomkins, Tramm Hudson, Dino Pavlakos, Steve Plimpton, Ann Hodges, Robert Clay*, John Noe, Dave Evensky, John Kelly, Carmela Andrade
SUN High Perf. Computing: Dan Fraser*
Syracuse Univ.: Steve Chapin
UNM: Barney Maccabe
UVA: Greg Lindahl
VA Linux: Brian Finley*

Lilia G. Martinez
Last modified: October 4, 2000