What’s New in HPC Research: September (Part 1)

By Oliver Peckham

September 18, 2018

In this new bimonthly feature, HPCwire will highlight newly published research in the high-performance computing community and related domains. From exascale to quantum computing, the details are here. Check back every other week for more!

Reconciling HPC and DISC

Image courtesy of the authors.

Data scientists are often faced with the challenging task of integrating HPC and data-intensive scalable computing (DISC) – paradigms designed for different purposes and with different requirements. In this paper, a team of researchers from Brazil, France, and the U.S. outline the SciDISC project, which seeks to effectively combine simulation and data analysis activities, and discuss its first results. The authors call the results “quite encouraging” and plan to “improve … dataflow monitoring, debugging and extend … support for adaptation at runtime like parameter fine-tuning and data reduction.”

Authors: Patrick Valduriez, Marta Mattoso, Reza Akbarinia, Heraldo Borges, José Camata, Alvaro Coutinho, Daniel Gaspar, Noel Lemus, Ji Liu, Hermano Lustosa, Florent Masseglia, Fabricio Nogueira da Silva, Vítor Silva, Renan Souza, Kary Ocaña, Eduardo Ogasawara, Daniel de Oliveira, Esther Pacitti, Fabio Porto, and Dennis Shasha.

Matching HPC hardware and software

The mismatch between hardware capabilities and programming software is the predominant challenge facing exaflop computing. This article, written by a team of researchers from France and the U.S., examine key performance enablers at the software level, outlining limitations and promising approaches for remedying the mismatch. They conclude by recommending a way forward for codesigned hardware and software.

Authors: William Jalby, David Kuck, Allen D. Malony, Michel Masella, Abdelhafid Mazouz, and Mihail Popov.

Analyzing magnetic fields in the exaflop regime

Image courtesy of the authors.

Radio interferometers are collecting data from galaxy clusters at unprecedented resolutions, allowing researchers to analyze intra-cluster magnetic fields at small scales for the first time. The authors of this paper – a team from Italy, Korea, and Minnesota – present a new numerical approach to simulating these magnetic fields for future cosmological simulations. The new code – called ‘WOMBAT’ and developed in collaboration with Cray – will allow researchers to scale magnetic field simulations to the exaflop regime.

Authors: Julius Donnert, Hanbyul Jang, Peter Mendygral, Gianfranco Brunetti, Dongsu Ryu, and Thomas Jones.

Overlapping network communications and computation

Exascale HPC will increase the pressure on systems to effectively overlap network communications and computation activities. In this paper, a team of French researchers examine the MPI standard for asynchronous communication progress. Specifically, they discuss dedicated progress threads (PTs), which struggle with balancing efficiency and computational burden. The authors propose “a solution inspired from the PT approach which benefits from idle time of compute threads to make MPI communication progress in background” and claim a performance gain on unbalanced workloads.

Authors: Marc Sergent, Mario Dagrada, Patrick Carribault, Julien Jaeger, and Marc Pérache.

Isolating resilience to silent errors

Silent errors – errors that bypass detection – are a growing threat as HPC systems increase in size and power. This paper, written by researchers from UC Merced, LLNL, and the Technical University of Munich, looks at resilience to silent errors. The authors present a framework called ‘FlipTracker’ that is designed to isolate the resilient properties of applications that are naturally resilient to silent errors. The authors then present a set of resulting patterns.

Authors: Luanzheng Guo, Dong Li, Ignacio Laguna, and Martin Schulz.

Optimizing data center energy use for HPC applications

Data centers typically optimize energy use by profiling the energy use of an application via a full execution – a technique less than practical with HPC applications that have long execution times. In this paper, researchers from Complutense University of Madrid and Technical University of Madrid “present a methodology to estimate the dynamic CPU and memory energy consumption of an application without executing it completely.” They claim that their methodology “shows an overall error below 8.0% when compared to the dynamic energy of the whole execution of the application.”

Authors: Juan Carlos Salinas-Hilburg, Marina Zapater, Jose M. Moya, and Jose L. Ayala.

Increasing the efficiency of VMs for HPC

Virtualizing HPC environments has become a common tool for researchers and analysts. The authors of this paper – a team from Germany and the UK – look at the use of virtual machines for HPC. The authors discuss how the checkpoint size of a virtualized environment can be minimized through a zeroing technique, increasing efficiency in several areas.

Authors: Ramy Gad, Simon Pickartz, Tim Süß, Lars Nagel, Stefan Lankes, Antonello Monti, and André Brinkmann.


Do you know about research that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

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