Past Events

The HPC Advisory Council will hold the 2012 European Conference on June 17th, 2012, in conjunction with the ISC’12 conference in Hamburg, Germany. The workshop will focus on HPC productivity, and advanced HPC topics and futures, and will bring together system managers, researchers, developers, computational scientists and industry affiliates to discuss recent developments and future advancements in High-Performance Computing.
Click here for more info.

Parallel Communication, I/O and Storage Interfaces for Accelerators:
HPC Advisory Council Special Interest Group (together with CSCS)
Nov 15, 2011
5:30PM - 7:00PM

HPC Advisory Council University Awards
Nov 16, 2011
12:15PM - 1:15PM

The HPC Advisory Council Outreach and Research Activities at SC11 Exhibitor Forum
Nov 17, 2011
3:30PM - 4:15PM
Room 613/614
Speakers: Gilad Shainer and Brian Sparks

Presentation: "The Effect of MPI Collective Operations on OpenFOAM Performance"
Speakers: Gilad Shainer and Tong Liu

The HPC Advisory Council will hold the 2011 European Workshop on June 19th, 2011, in conjunction with the ISC'11 conference in Hamburg, Germany. The workshop will focus on HPC productivity, and advanced HPC topics and futures, and will bring together system managers, researchers, developers, computational scientists and industry affiliates to discuss recent developments and future advancements in High-Performance Computing.
Click here for more info.

Presentation: LS-DYNA® Best-Practices: Networking, MPI and Parallel File System Effect on LS-DYNA Performance
Speaking: Gilad Shainer, HPC Advisory Council Chairman

The HPC Advisory Council will hold the 2010 European Workshop on May 30th, 2010, in conjunction with the ISC’10 conference in Hamburg Germany. The workshop will focus on HPC productivity, and advanced HPC topics and futures, and will bring together system managers, researchers, developers, computational scientists and industry affiliates to discuss recent developments and future advancements in High-Performance Computing.

The HPC Advisory Council and the Swiss Supercomputing Centre will host the HPC Advisory Council Switzerland Workshop 2010  in the Lugano Convention Centre, Lugano, Switzerland, from March 15-17, 2010.

The workshop will focus on High-Performance Computing education and training including CPU technologies, accelerators, networking, storage, software middleware and various applications. The workshop will also cover advanced topics such as MPI offloads, networking optimizations and will feature presenters from the Swiss Supercomputing Centre, Simula Research Laboratory, HPC Advisory Council professionals as well as technologists from various Independent Software Vendors and OEMs. Hands-on training will be incorporated within the workshop agenda to allow participants to actually configure and test high-performance clusters. The workshop will bring together system managers, researchers, developers, computational scientists, students and industry affiliates for cross-training and to discuss recent HPC developments and future advancements.

Presentation: HOMME and POPperf High Performance Applications: Optimizations for Scale
Speaking: Gilad Shainer, HPC Advisory Council Chairman
Time: Tuesday, March 9th 13:30 - 15:00pm.

Presenters: Gilad Shainer (Mellanox), Tong Liu (Mellanox), Jacob Liberman (Dell), Jeff Layton (Dell), Onur Celebioglu (Dell), Scot A. Schultz (AMD), Joshua Mora (AMD), David Cownie (AMD)

Abstract: From concept to engineering, and from design to test and manufacturing, the automotive industry relies on powerful virtual development solutions. CFD and crash simulations are performed in an effort to secure quality and speed up the development process. The recent trends in cluster environments, such as multi-core CPUs and interconnect consolidation are changing the dynamics of clustered-based simulations. Software applications are being reshaped for higher parallelism, as well as hardware configurations for solving the new demands on scalability and efficiency. Both "productivity-aware" and "power-aware" have become metrics for new systems design and implementations. The system architecture needs to be capable of providing higher productivity for present and future simulations; while maintaining low power consumption. In this paper we cover best practices for achieving maximum productivity while sustaining or reducing power consumption on LS-DYNA simulations.

Presentations:

• Conference Paper (PDF)

Presenters: Gilad Shainer (HPC Advisory Council chairman), Jennifer Koerv (AMD), Donnie Bell (Dell), Sharan Kalwani (GM), Lynn Lewis (Microsoft), Stan Posey (Panasas), Lee Porter (ParTec), Arend DittmerJoshua (Penguin Computing)

Abstract: The presentation introduces the HPC Advisory Council mission, activities and future plans.

Presentations:

• Presentation (PDF)

Presenters: Gilad Shainer & Tong Liu (Mellanox Technologies), Joshua Mora (AMD), Jacob Liberman (Dell), John Michalakes (National Center for Atmospheric Research)

Abstract: The Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) Model is a fully functioning modeling system for atmospheric research and operational weather prediction communities. With an emphasis on efficiency, portability, maintainability, scalability and productivity, WRF has been successfully deployed over the years on a wide variety of HPC clustered compute nodes connected with high speed interconnects - currently the most used system architecture for high-performance computing. As such, understanding WRF dependency on the various clustering elements, such as the CPU, interconnects and the software libraries are crucial for enabling efficient predictions and high productivity. Our results identify WRF's communication-sensitive points and demonstrate WRF's dependency on high-speed networks and fast CPU to CPU communication. Both factors are critical to maintaining scalability and increasing productivity when adding cluster nodes. We conclude with specific recommendations for improving WRF performance, scalability, and productivity as measured in jobs per day. Because proprietary hardware and software can quickly erode cluster architecture's favorable economics, we will restrict our investigation to standards based hardware and open source software readily available to typical research institutions.

Presentations:

• Presentation (PDF)
• Conference Paper (PDF)

Presenters: Gilad Shainer & Tong Liu (Mellanox Technologies), Joshua Mora (AMD), Jacob Liberman (Dell), Owen Brazell (Schlumberger)

Abstract: Schlumberger's ECLIPSE Reservoir Engineering software is a widely used oil and gas reservoir numerical simulation suite. Like many other High Performance Computing (HPC) applications, ECLIPSE runs in a complex ecosystem of hardware and software components. Maximizing ECLIPSE performance requires a deep understanding of how each component impacts the overall solution. However, as new hardware and software comes to market, design decisions are often based on assumptions or projections rather than empirical testing. This presentation removes the guesswork from cluster design for ECLIPSE by providing best practices for increased performance and productivity. It includes scalability testing, interconnect performance comparisons, job placement strategies, and power efficiency considerations. It also introduces an ongoing collaboration between Dell, AMD, and Mellanox dedicated to publishing timely application-specific best practices and performance data.

Presentations:

• Presentation (PDF)