Porting Procedure

From HP-SEE Wiki

Porting of the software applications to the HP-SEE infrastructure is usually the first step after the proposals are granted access to the HPC centres. This process involves the close interaction between the applications developers (AD) and the application support staff of the HP-SEE centres. In this context, a major asset for the acceleration and the success of the porting operations is the participation of AD in project’s trainings.

In the following it is assumed that the standard HP-SEE access procedures have been followed, which means that:

• the relevant technical teams (TT) that can assist the AD in porting their applications to the HPC facilities of the project were identified, and
• the developers and the technical staff of the HPC centre where the application is to run already had a first contact and some preliminary information does exist regarding the level of compatibility with the existing software platform.

Under these conditions, the stages of the general porting procedure are as follows:

• Planning This stage first involves a deeper analysis of the application requirements, starting from the data the AD provided in the application form and subsequent communications between AD and TT regarding AD's expectations and the hardware and software limitations of the HPC centre. As a result of these discussions, an action plan on code and software environment changes is adopted in order to adapt the application to the facility.
• Adjustement The action plan is put in execution, requiring code modification by AD following the TT guidelines and, sometimes, changes in the software environment, performed by TT. During this process, the planning can be modified for various and unexpected reasons.
• Testing After getting the application running in the software environment of the centre, this must be optimized for best performance. Scalability tests must be conducted and, in case the results are not satisfactory, new adjustments could be required.