Canadian HPC Lab Maintains Warm Relationship with Sun

By John West

February 18, 2009

Canada’s High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL) is a virtual HPC organization spread out over the campuses of eight universities in Ontario. Fully half of the Laboratory’s $200 million (CAD) 10-year budget is provided by investments from its industrial partner, Sun. HPCwire spoke with the HPCVL’s executive director, Ken Edgecombe about the HPCVL, what it does, and why Sun is so committed to making this effort a success.

The HPCVL is spread out over eight campuses in Ontario, Canada — Carleton University, Queen’s University, The Royal Military College of Canada, the University of Ottawa, Ryerson University, St. Lawrence College, Seneca College, and Loyalist College — and provides services and expertise to over 800 Canadian researchers using a collection of high end servers and storage from Sun Microsystems.

The HPCVL provides computational services for a fairly traditional set of HPC applications, including everything from biomedical research to computational fluid dynamics. The center has a staff of 13, including 4 who provide user support and education and also assistance with applications. Each user group pays an access fee of $2,000 (CAD) that helps the organization defray unexpected expenses, but they aren’t required to pay for the computational hours they consume (or bytes stored). This model helps ensure that those who need the HPCVL’s resources to drive their research forward can afford the resources they need.

One of the key tasks for the laboratory’s staff is to match users and their applications to a particular set of resources in HPCVL’s hardware offering. The HPCVL has a cluster of 8 Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 servers, each with 64 quad-core 2.52 GHz Sparc64 VII processors supporting two hardware threads per core, for compute intensive jobs with large memory requirements. There is also a cluster of 7 Sun Fire 25000 servers, each of which has 72 dual-core UltraSPARC-IV+ processors, aimed at a similar (but perhaps less demanding) workload. HPCVL’s Victoria Falls cluster is built from 73 Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 Servers, each of which has two UltraSparc T2 chips with 8 cores apiece, each supporting 8 hardware threads. At full capacity this cluster can support just over 9,300 threads, and the system provides a throughput compute platform for HPCVL’s users. All of the systems use Sun’s Grid Engine workload management tool, and run Solaris.

Something that struck me as unusual for an academic computer center is HPCVL’s focus on security. Their Web page calls it “one of Canada’s leading secure HPC environments,” and Edgecombe referred to security issues several times in the first few minutes of our conversation. Why the focus on security, when university compute environments are typically thought of as a little more relaxed? Edgecombe explains that when the laboratory was started, a key goal was to grow HPC use among non-traditional users. One of the groups they targeted was medical and pharmaceutical industry researchers, who in addition to  having regulatory issues around data preservation and protection, also have serious concerns about the protection of intellectual property. “And the integrity of the data itself is a core issue for every researcher,” Edgecombe points out.

Although it is comprised of many individual institutions, the HPCVL is a center of Queens University, which provides a funding channel for the organization. The laboratory is funded by grants from a variety of public institutions, including the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. Its relationship with Sun forms the private part of this public/private partnership. Edgecombe says that the laboratory’s 10-year budget is $200 million (CAD), and fully half of that comes from Sun in the form of funding and in kind donations.

So, just why is Sun so committed to the work that the HPCVL is doing? I talked with Sun’s Michael Schulman, who is in charge of HPC marketing, to get a better feel for how relationships like these fit in with Sun’s strategy.

Schulman points out that Sun has traditionally had strong relationships with the academic community, pointing to TACC and the Tokyo Institute of Technology as other current examples. For Sun, these academic environments are often great places to find what Schulman calls “launch partners” — customers willing to accept the very first instance of new gear to help Sun flush out the kinks. According to Schulman, TACC’s Ranger incorporated five new technologies, and both Tokyo Tech and HPCVL have also deployed first-of-its-kind Sun technology.

Schulman says that Sun lets these relationships develop organically, rather than building them on a specific schedule or quota. In HPCVL’s case, Edgecombe has long been a customer of Sun, and Sun’s relationship with the organization has grown over time. Of particular advantage for Sun in HPCVL’s case is that the lab has deployed Sun’s chip multithreading products for traditional HPC at a time when most in the market are going x86-64. This difference gives Sun the opportunity to evaluate the performance of these products on the wide variety of applications that HPCVL’s users are running, and then bring that feedback back into the design process.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire