Objective: Evaluate the effectiveness of scalable parallel computing (SPC) systems across a very broad range of scientific and engineering applications, identify the nature and degree of factors that impede efficiency, and determine users' accessibility to SPC systems for applications programming.
Approach: Establish a collaboration between NSF and NASA computational centers to achieve a critical mass through the sharing of test SPC systems, talent in parallel computation, and parallel application codes. Select parallel test applications and port to selected SPC test systems. Determine performance with respect to system size and problem scale. Measure execution overhead and idle times to expose sources of performance degradation. Capture user experiences regarding ease of use of SPC hardware and software systems for achieving useful scientific computations (see picture, 120K).
Accomplishments:
Significance: JNNIE results reveal important trends and characteristics of SPC technology and demonstrate the potential and challenges in exploiting this capability for scientific and engineering applications. These results and conclusions will influence future hardware and software system designers in advancing the quality and utility of this important class of high performance computer systems.
Status/Plans: The Project has been successfully concluded and documented. Findings are being disseminated throughout the high-performance computing community.
Point of Contact:
Dr. Thomas Sterling
Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS)
tron@chesapeake.gsfc.nasa.gov
301-286-2757