Porting Scientific Applications to OpenPOWER
Published on Friday 16 January 2015
Speaker and co-authors
Dirk Pleiter (Jülich Supercomputing Centre) Andrew Adinets (JSC), Hans Böttiger (IBM), Paul Baumeister (JSC), Thorsten Hater (JSC), Uwe Fischer (IBM)
Abstract
While over the past years significant experience for using GPUs with processors based on the x86 ISA has been obtained, GPU-accelerated systems with POWER processors have become available only very recently. In this talk we report on early experiences of porting selected scientific applications to GPU-accelerated POWER8 systems. We will explore basic performance features through micro-benchmarks, but our main focus will be on results for full applications or mini-applications. These have been selected such that hardware characteristics can be explored for applications with significantly different performance signatures. The application domains range from physics to life sciences and have in common that they are in need of supercomputing resources. Particular attention will be given to performance analysis capabilities of the system and the available software tools. We finally will report on a newly established POWER Acceleration and Design Center, which has the goal of providing support to scientists in using OpenPOWER technologies.
Speaker’s bio
Prof. Dr. Dirk Pleiter is research group leader at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Regensburg. At JSC he is leading the work on application oriented technology development. Currently he is principal investigator of the ExascaleInnovation Center, the NVIDIA Application Lab at Jülich as well as the newly established POWER Acceleration and Design Center. He has played a leading role in several projects for developing massively-parallel special purpose computers, including QPACE.
Speaker’s organization
Forschungszentrum Jülich – a member of the Helmholtz Association – is one of the largest research centres in Europe and member of the OpenPOWER Foundation since March 2014. It pursues cutting-edge interdisciplinary research addressing the challenges facing society in the fields of health, energy and the environment, and information technologies. Within the Forschungszentrum, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) is one of the three national supercomputing centres in Germany as part of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS). JSC operates supercomputers which are among the largest in Europe.