NICS Tackles Big Science with Beacon

June 16, 2014

With support from the National Science Foundation and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the National Institute for Computational Science (NICS) is expanding access to Beacon, its newest HPC cluster, providing researchers with a powerful research tool. Efforts are underway to optimize a number of science and engineering applications for this system utilizing both Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors.

By working with researchers to optimizing scientific codes to run on the advanced Intel architecture, the NICS team has determined that Beacon can register impressive performance gains for its users. In particular, scientists and engineers investigating such complex fields as nano-electronics, astrophysics, chemistry, biochemistry, subatomic physics and applied mathematics will be able to tackle larger, more complicated problems while controlling costs.

NICS’s drive to create the high performance computer cluster was the result of a number of factors. Optimizing application performance was at the top of the list – researchers needed to be able to modernize their code, taking full advantage of any inherent parallelism in order to manage increasingly demanding big science applications.

Another challenge facing the NICS team was the need to accommodate a wide variety of users with an equally diverse set of requirements. For example, a researcher running a complex simulation might need extensive raw computer power, while a bioinformatics scientist might require large amounts of memory.

For NICS, the primary driver was to learn how to build more efficient clusters to support researchers investigating increasingly complex, computer problems without significantly increasing hardware costs, power and cooling requirements, or software development costs.

Building Beacon

The solution, the Beacon system, is a Cray CS300-AC cluster supercomputer equipped with Intel Xeon processers and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. The system includes 48 compute nodes and six I/O nodes, with a total of 768 conventional cores and 11,520 accelerator cores. Compute nodes include Intel Xeon processors E5-2670 and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors 5110P. Integrated into the storage environment are Intel Solid-State Drives. To optimize code, software developers use the Intel Cluster Studio XE suite.

Building a hybrid system consisting of Intel processors and coprocessors opened up new possibilities for software development and infrastructure testing by the NICS team. According to Glenn Brook, CTO at the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennessee, “…the (hybrid) environment allows us to explore a variety of programming and processing scenarios. At the same time, the environment is designed to help us examine energy efficiency, data movement, and other variables. We hope to find new ways to maximize performance, minimize energy consumption, and reduce costs.”

Intel provided Intel Cluster Studio XE software development tools to help researchers optimize codes for the new architecture. The fact that team members were already familiar with the tools streamlined the optimization work. Noted Brook, “With the Intel Software Development Tools, optimizing for the Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor is not substantially different than optimizing for the Intel Xeon processor E5 family.”

Speeding Up Performance, Reducing Costs

Working with the optimized code, the NICS researchers are realizing a number of benefits. For example, Brook reports that an optimized computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code achieves about 2.25 times the performance on an Intel Xeon Phi coprocessor as compared to running the identical code on two Intel Xeon E5-2670 processors. “Those results indicate that researchers can build clusters that use Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors to boost performance while reducing costs,” he says.

And, Brook adds, ultimately, Beacon’s enhanced price/performance allows researchers to solve larger, more complex problems while controlling costs. By using Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors, organizations can build smaller clusters with fewer nodes and achieve the same performance as much larger clusters – a savings in hardware acquisition, energy costs, and floor space.

The Beacon project also demonstrates the feasibility of performing big science on sustainable systems. The cluster’s processing power earned it a spot on the November 2012 and June 2013 Top500 list, while its reduced energy consumption allowed Beacon to take top ranking on the November 2012 Green500 list. The cluster was rated at nearly 2.5 billion floating-point operations per second (gigaFLOPS) per watt.

“We hope to expand the Beacon project, creating more of a production environment that is available for science and engineering research,” Brook says. “At the same time, we will continue to evaluate the ways the Intel MIC Architecture can help reduce energy consumption and control the demand for human resources in software development.”

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!

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

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from its predecessors, including the red-hot H100 and A100 GPUs. 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. While Nvidia may not spring to mind when thinking of the quant Read more…

2024 Winter Classic: Meet the HPE Mentors

March 18, 2024

The latest installment of the 2024 Winter Classic Studio Update Show features our interview with the HPE mentor team who introduced our student teams to the joys (and potential sorrows) of the HPL (LINPACK) and accompany Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the field was normalized for boys in 1969 when the Apollo 11 missi Read more…

Apple Buys DarwinAI Deepening its AI Push According to Report

March 14, 2024

Apple has purchased Canadian AI startup DarwinAI according to a Bloomberg report today. Apparently the deal was done early this year but still hasn’t been publicly announced according to the report. Apple is preparing Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimization algorithms to iteratively refine their parameters until Read more…

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

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, code-named 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…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Survey of Rapid Training Methods for Neural Networks

March 14, 2024

Artificial neural networks are computing systems with interconnected layers that process and learn from data. During training, neural networks utilize optimizat Read more…

PASQAL Issues Roadmap to 10,000 Qubits in 2026 and Fault Tolerance in 2028

March 13, 2024

Paris-based PASQAL, a developer of neutral atom-based quantum computers, yesterday issued a roadmap for delivering systems with 10,000 physical qubits in 2026 a Read more…

India Is an AI Powerhouse Waiting to Happen, but Challenges Await

March 12, 2024

The Indian government is pushing full speed ahead to make the country an attractive technology base, especially in the hot fields of AI and semiconductors, but Read more…

Charles Tahan Exits National Quantum Coordination Office

March 12, 2024

(March 1, 2024) My first official day at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was June 15, 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 loc Read more…

AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day

March 11, 2024

What impact does AI bias have on women and girls? What can people do to increase female participation in the AI field? These are some of the questions the tech 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…

Analyst Panel Says Take the Quantum Computing Plunge Now…

November 27, 2023

Should you start exploring quantum computing? Yes, said a panel of analysts convened at Tabor Communications HPC and AI on Wall Street conference earlier this y 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…

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…

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…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

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…

Training of 1-Trillion Parameter Scientific AI Begins

November 13, 2023

A US national lab has started training a massive AI brain that could ultimately become the must-have computing resource for scientific researchers. Argonne N 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…

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…

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…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire