Wednesday, March 15, 2017
8:30am – 10:00am
An introduction to Intel’s Knights Landing and its performance characteristics
Intel’s next generation Xeon Phi, Knights Landing (KNL), brings many changes from the first generation, Knights Corner (KNC). The new processor supports self-‐‑hosted nodes, connects cores via a mesh topology rather than a ring, and uses a new memory technology, MCDRAM. It is based on Intel’s x86 technology with wide vector units and hardware threads. Many of the lessons learned from using KNC do still apply, such as efficient multi-‐‑ threading, optimized vectorization, and strided memory access.
In this tutorial we will review the KNL architecture, and discuss the differences between KNC and KNL. We will also discuss the impact of the different MCDRAM memory configurations and the different modes of cluster configuration. Recommendations regarding hybrid MPI+OMP execution when using KNL with the Intel OmniPath fabric will be provided.
We will also analyze the performance of some of the most popular applications in Stampede when running on KNL, and compare it to alternative platforms.
Instructor: Carlos Rosales-Fernandez
Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin
10:30am-12:00pm
HDF5: An introduction plus an I/O tuning case study
HDF5 is a mature library and file format for the exchange of scientific data, as well as for it’s high-performance archival and retrieval. It has emerged as the standard for the underlying architecture in utilities such as pytables and NetCDF. HDF5 bindings exist for python, C++, Fortran and java, with others under active development. Recently ODBC support has been added and interoperability with Apache Spark and other hyperscale technologies has been demonstrated.
HDF5 has deep and rich functionality, and getting started with it can be challenging. This tutorial session will provide an introduction to basic concepts of HDF5, and will showcase how a small subset of its features have been used to tune the performance of a petascale seismic code.
Instructor: Frank Willmore, HDF Group
2 Part Tutorial – 8:30-Noon
Essential HPC Finance Practice: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Internal Funding, and Cost-Recovery Models
The tutorial provides an impartial, practical, non-sales focused guide to the financial aspects of HPC facilities and service. It presents a rare and invaluable opportunity for HPC managers, practitioners, and stakeholders to learn more about calculating and using TCO models; along with the pros and cons of different internal cost recovery and funding models. Well-managed TCO, return on investment and cost recovery models can be hugely beneficial to HPC managers and operators by demonstrating the value of HPC to the organization, driving the continuation and growth of HPC investment. They can also help uncover practical improvements to deliver better services to users. Attendees will benefit from exploration of the main issues, pros and cons of differing approaches, practical tips, hard-earned experience and potential pitfalls. After the tutorial, attendees will be in a stronger position to calculate and use TCO within their organizations, and to design and use internal cost-recovery models. The tutorial is based on experience across a diverse set of real world cases in various countries, in both private and public sectors, with projects of all sizes and shapes.
Instructors: Andrew Jones (NAG) and Owen Thomas (Red Oak Consulting)
Workshop (8:30am – 12:00pm)
Best Practices in Supercomputing Systems Management
This workshop will share Best Practices in Supercomputing Systems Management.
In the last few years, our industry has made great progress improving the reliability of very large MPI jobs in our clusters. Many of the ideas we have implemented came from friends at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and Oak Ridge National Labs. We are organizing a workshop to share best practices in OS deployment and automation, identification of hardware and facilities issues before they impact systems performance and reliability, and systems instrumentation to improve application performance.
Experts from TACC, Oak Ridge, Rice, Chevron and BP will present and share their experience.
