Technology Watch

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Contents

Technology watch methodology

Introduction

The task of the Technology Watch is to observe, track, filter out and assess potential technologies from a very wide field extending beyond the normal confines of the sector. A Technology Watch process can be broken down into four main phases: a needs audit, data collection, processing of the data collected and integration and dissemination of the results. The Technology Watch process must be capable of identifying any scientific or technical innovation with potential to create opportunities or avoid threats.

Objectives of technology watch

Study and follow the latest trends and advances in technology both in terms of software and programming as well as in terms of hardware and procurement. On the one hand, new architectures and system designs are constantly released by the vendors of top systems, some more suited for particular user communities than others. On the other hand, new software technologies and paradigms, like cloud computing, general purpose GPU computing, etc. emerge from research or industrial efforts. This leads to a naturally heterogeneous distributed HPC infrastructure, and WP8 will establish permanent technology watch to cater for regional user needs. To facilitate this, the project will develop links with PRACE, the industry, and follow the advances in research and developments of HPC systems via scientific conferences and journals.

Technological areas

  • Software
    • Tools and libraries
    • New programming languages and models
  • System software, middleware and programming environments
  • Hardware
    • Green HPC (energy efficiency, cooling)
    • Processor architectures (CPU, GPU)
    • Interconnect technologies
    • Memory and storage units

Methodology

  • Organize meetings with vendors

Since the beginning of the project several 1 hour meetings have been organized with vendors and appended to the regular PSC meetings of the consortium. This is to continue in the remaining of the project.

  • Ask vendors to fill our survey

This questionnaire is intended to help polling HPC hardware vendors to determine the most important technical trends that they sense in the HPC area. These trends are accumulated, analyzed and then synthesized into an uniform report. The polls will be repeated periodically in order to follow up the most relevant novelties that might impact the near future of HPC.

Vendor survey URL: http://survey.ipb.ac.rs/index.php?sid=82412&lang=en

  • Collect know-hows from other projects

The public deliverables of relevant projects (DEISA, PRACE, EGI, EMI, etc.) may content useful information for our work packages.

  • Participate on SC/ISC conferences and write digest about the new technical solutions which has been discovered. These summaries should be created about those technological areas which have been defined
  • The evaluation and dissemination of the new technologies can be done by using the hp-see-tech@lists.hp-see.eu mailing list and http://hpseewiki.ipb.ac.rs/index.php/Technology_Watch wiki page
  • Participation in STRATOS (The PRACE Advisory Group for Strategic Technologies) group work. STRATOS is open to consortia of industry and research institutions as well as members from industrial and non-industrial European research and development projects. This will be done by PRACE HPC partners (IPB, GRNET, NIIFI) at the beginning and later we will try do this by PRACE/HP-SEE MoU.
  • Liaise with PRACE AISBL (Association International Sans But Lucratif) and include in the related MoU the possibility access the technology watch information that is generated within PRACE

Implementation plan

Involved in this work

  • ICCT-BAS
  • IPB
  • GRNET
  • NIIFI (Gabor Roczei will coordinate this task)
  • IFIN-HH

Time plan until the end of the project

  • Plans for 2012
    • Participation in STRATOS working group
    • Ask more vendors to fill our survey
    • Organize meetings with vendors
    • Creation of technical digests about the visited conferences
    • Finalize PRACE MoU trying to include the technology watch task
  • Plans for 2013
    • Participation in STRATOS working group
    • Ask more vendors to fill our survey
    • Continue meetings with vendors
    • Creation of technical digests about the visited conferences
    • D8.3 Permanent technology watch report (delivery date: M31)

Planned conferences in 2012 

Which partner will participate: ?
Which partner will participate: ?

Conclusions

The technology watch is a complex task where we need to follow up several technological areas. These are described in section 3. If somebody will participate on SC/ISC conferences then he/she need to write a technical digest about the new technical solutions which have been discovered and these summaries should be created about those technological areas which have been defined. The dissemination can be done by using the hp-see-tech mailing list and HP-SEE wiki. The new HPC trends will be collected from the vendors over that survey which has been created for this purpose.

Coolected materials

Technical digests about the visited conferences

Vendor responses about technical trends

HPC architecture (Commodity Cluster, Custom based solutions (mainframe)

We are sensing that the difference between the classic mainframe based resources (SMPs, NUMA systems) and the PC-based clusters has been dissolving as technological elements are mutually transferred between the two.

  • How do you see this trend?
    • Vendor 1: Yes, agree. However, this trend will reach its limit in future.
  • Do you think that the clustered environments will replace the classic mainframe models?
    • Vendor 1: PC-based clusters will not be able to replace classic mainframe resources at least for the next 5 years. Both will be always needed for certain environments.
  • Or do you think that the classic mainframe architectures will survive within the multi-core server architectures?
    • Vendor 1: Yes, classic mainframe architectures will survive within the multi-core server architectures because mainframe resources also implement such technologies.

Processor architectures (CPU, GPU)

The average number of cores in nodes has been increasing.

  • Do you think that this trend will continue in the future?
    • Vendor 1: Yes, definitely.
  • What do you think to be the largest core number in a single server in a year?
    • Vendor 1: 96
  • Do you think that the increasing number of cores will not contribute to the performance increase sufficiently?
    • Vendor 1: Increasing number of cores will contribute to the performance increase sufficiently.
  • Do you think that AMD and Intel will dominate the HPC market?
    • Vendor 1: Yes.
  • Do you think that the graphics processors will keep representing an increasing share in the CPU portfolio?
    • Vendor 1: Yes, but this inclrese will go slower.



Useful links

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