HPCwire: Advanced Cluster Systems Unveils Software that Parallelizes Sequential Apps

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November 01, 2011

Advanced Cluster Systems Unveils Software that Parallelizes Sequential Apps

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Nov. 1 -- Advanced Cluster Systems, Inc. (ACS) announced a new software solution that parallelizes modular sequential software applications, enabling optimal performance on multi-core platforms and clusters. The United States Patent and Trademark Office recently granted ACS a rare “no prior art” patent for their breakthrough technology: Supercomputing Engine Technology or SET.

“With our solution, developing highly-scalable parallel code is as easy as developing sequential code,” said Zvi Tannenbaum, CEO and founder of ACS. SET adopts the parallel paradigm of Message Passing Interface (MPI) while allowing programmers to think sequentially.

“This makes parallel programming accessible to a much larger pool of programmers,” said ACS CTO, Dr. Dean Dauger. “Rather than restrict parallel programming to the elite, SET makes it possible for applications to become parallelized far more quickly and inexpensively than before. It breaks through the traditional performance/programming barrier, which is a compromise between performance and the cost of code development.”

As a result, applications get to market faster, development and resource costs are lower, and high performance computing projects see revenue sooner. Ultimately, end users enjoy a better, higher performance experience.

Target markets for the solution include software companies developing for legacy migration, cloud computing and high-performance applications; small and medium enterprises with high performance computing (HPC) requirements; military software development projects that need to manage legacy code; and HPC companies that require better software solutions for their hardware platforms.

The initial proof of concept for ACS SET brought supercomputing-style parallelization to Wolfram Research Mathematica, resulting in the Supercomputing Engine for Mathematica (SEM). The SEM project completed in one skilled man/month. “It would have taken at least a year to do it using conventional methods,” said Tannenbaum.

Traditional, manual code parallelization requires highly-specialized knowledge and experience. Most development groups don’t have the expertise or resources to deal with this level of coding.

“SET requires only a minimal understanding beyond sequential programming,” said Dauger. “The resulting code achieves near-MPI speeds at a much lower cost.”

Once a serial modular program is designed, parallelization can be accomplished very quickly by adding SET’s API glue code to the program modules. Glue code does not affect the functionality of the code, and it doesn’t change the way the sequential code works. SET is applied to modular sequential code so it runs in parallel without “breaking” the modules. The technology simply arranges the sequential modules on the SET infrastructure. “The code is not even aware it is running in parallel,” said Tannenbaum. “All the complex parallelization tasks are hidden from programmers. There’s no need for complex parallel compilers or sophisticated parallel languages or development efforts.”

ACS will unveil the newly patented SET solution at the Supercomputing 2011 show in Seattle, Washington this month (November 14-17, 2011). Demonstrations are scheduled for Wednesday, November 16^th from 10:30AM to 11AM Pacific Time at Room WSCC 611/612.

About Advanced Cluster Systems, Inc.

Advanced Cluster Systems builds parallelization tools for high performance computing applications. The company’s Supercomputing Engine Technology™ (SET™) software is positioned to advance the software and computer industries years ahead in just a few months. For more information, contact Zvi Tannenbaum at 949-494-0440, by email at info@advclustersys.com or on the web at http://www.advancedclustersystems.com/ACS/Home.html.

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Source: Advanced Cluster Systems

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