[Crib-list] Friday, May 5, 2006 -- COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCH in BOSTON SEMINAR

[Shirley Entzminger]

		COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCH in BOSTON SEMINAR

DATE:		FRIDAY, May 5, 2006
TIME:		12:30 PM
LOCATION:	Building 32, Room 144 (Stata Center)

(Pizza and beverages will be provided between 12:00 & 12:30 PM.)


Title:		DARPA HIGH PRODUCTIVITY COMPUTING SYSTEMS PROGRAM 
		AND THE PATH TOWARDS USABLE PETASCALE COMPUTING*

Speaker:	DR. JEREMY KEPNER (MIT Lincoln Laboratory)


ABSTRACT:

High Performance Computing has seen extraordinary growth in peak 
performance from Megaflops to Teraflops in the past decades.  This 
increase in performance has been accompanied by a large shift away from 
the original national security user base of the 1970s and 1980s to more 
commercially oriented applications (e.g., bioinformatics and 
entertainment).  In addition, there has been a significant increase in the 
difficulty of using these systems, which is now the domain of highly 
specialized experts.

In response to these trends the DARPA High Productivity Computing Systems 
(HPCS) program was established to produce a new generation of economically 
viable high productivity computing systems for the national security and 
for the industrial user communities.  The primary technical goals of the 
program are to produce petascale computers that can better run national 
security applications and are usable by a broader range of scientists and 
engineers.  The HPCS program is fostering many technological innovations.  
One of the most important is the concept of a flatter memory hierarchy, 
which means that data from remote processors can be retrieved and used 
very efficiently.  A flatter memory hierarchy will result in a significant 
performance increase (up to 2000x) in certain important classes of 
applications.  In addition, a flatter memory hierarchy is much easier to 
program because the user doesn’t have to worry as much about precisely 
tailoring their application to avoid the high cost of retrieving data.

To measure the memory hierarchy the HPCS program has developed the HPC 
Challenge benchmark suite and has sponsored the HPC Challenge contest that 
awards a prize for the best performance on each benchmark.  In addition, 
there is also a coding contest, which rewards the best and most clearly 
written implementations of the benchmarks.  This talk will discuss the 
results of the first HPC Challenge contest, as well as provide an overview 
of the HPCS program.

_____________________________

*This work is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects 
Administration under Air Force Contract FA8721-05-C-0002.  Opinions, 
interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author 
and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA  02139

http://www-math.mit.edu/crib
For information on CRiB, contact:

Alan Edelman:  edelman at math.mit.edu
Steven G. Johnson:  stevenj at math.mit.edu
Jeremy Kepner:  kepner at ll.mit.edu