Reconfigurable hybrid interconnection for static and dynamic scientific applications

ABSTRACT

As we enter the era of peta-scale computing, system architects must plan for machines composed of tens or even hundreds of thousands of processors. Although fully connected networks such as fat-tree configurations currently dominate HPC interconnect designs, such approaches are inadequate for ultra-scale concurrencies due to the superlinear growth of component costs. Traditional low-degree interconnect topologies, such as 3D tori, have reemerged as a competitive solution due to the linear scaling of system components relative to the node count; however, such networks are poorly suited for the requirements of many scientific applications at extreme concurrencies. To address these limitations, we propose HFAST, a hybrid switch architecture that uses circuit switches to dynamically reconfigure lower-degree interconnects to suit the topological requirements of a given scientific application. This work presents several new research contributions. We develop an optimization strategy for HFAST mappings and demonstrate that efficiency gains can be attained across a broad range of static numerical computations. Additionally, we conduct an extensive analysis of the communication characteristics of a dynamically adapting mesh calculation and show that the HFAST approach can achieve significant advantages, even when compared with traditional fat-tree configurations. Overall results point to the promising potential of utilizing hybrid reconfigurable networks to interconnect future peta-scale architectures, for both static and dynamically adapting applications.

REFERENCES

• 1: F. Abel, C. Minkenberg, R. Luijten, M. Gusat, I. Iliadis, R. Hemenway, R. Grzybowski and C. Minkenberg, and R. Luijten. Optical-packet-switched interconnect for supercomputer applications. OSA J. Opt. Network, 3(12):900--913, Dec 2004.
• 2: Adaptive Mesh Refinement for structured grids. http: //flash.uchicago.edu/<tomek/AMR/index.html.
• 3: Kevin J. Barker , Alan Benner , Ray Hoare , Adolfy Hoisie , Alex K. Jones , Darren K. Kerbyson , Dan Li , Rami Melhem , Ram Rajamony , Eugen Schenfeld , Shuyi Shao , Craig Stunkel , Peter Walker, On the Feasibility of Optical Circuit Switching for High Performance Computing Systems, Proceedings of the 2005 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing, p.16, November 12-18, 2005 [doi>10.1109/SC.2005.48]
• 4: G. Bhanot, A. Gara, P. Heidelberger, E. Lawless, J.C. Sexton, and R. Walkup. Optimizing task layout on the blue gene/l supercomputer. IBM Journal on Research and Development, 49, March/May 2005.
• 5: J. Borrill , J. Carter , L. Oliker , D. Skinner, Integrated Performance Monitoring of a Cosmology Application on Leading HEC Platforms, Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on Parallel Processing, p.119-128, June 14-17, 2005 [doi>10.1109/ICPP.2005.47]
• 6: Cactus Homepage. http://www.cactuscode.org, 2004.
• 7: Kei Davis , Adolfy Hoisie , Greg Johnson , Darren J. Kerbyson , Mike Lang , Scott Pakin , Fabrizio Petrini, A Performance and Scalability Analysis of the BlueGene/L Architecture, Proceedings of the 2004 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing, p.41, November 06-12, 2004 [doi>10.1109/SC.2004.8]
• 8: T. DeFanti, M. Brown, J. Leigh, O. Yu, E. He, J. Mambretti, D. Lillethun, and J. Weinberger. Optical switching middleware for the optiputer. IEICE Trans. FUNDAMENTALS/COMMUN./ELECTRON./INF. & SYST, February 2003.
• 9: Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. http://seesar.lbl.gov/CCSE.
• 10: Vipul Gupta , Eugen Schenfeld, Performance analysis of a synchronous, circuit-switched interconnection cached network, Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Supercomputing, p.246-255, July 11-15, 1994, Manchester, England [doi>10.1145/181181.181540]
• 11: J.-F. Haas and B. Sturtevant. Interaction of weak shock waves with cylindrical and spherical gas inhomogeneities. Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Circuit-switching networks

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Network topology; Packet-switching networks

General Terms:
Design, Measurement, Theory

Keywords:
adaptive mesh refinement, feasibility, hybrid interconnects, petascale