Topology-Aware Data Aggregation for Intensive I/O on Large-Scale Supercomputers

International audienceReading and writing data efficiently from storage systems is critical for high performance data-centric applications. These I/O systems are being increasingly characterized by complex topologies and deeper memory hierarchies. Effective parallel I/O solutions are needed to scale applications on current and future supercomputers. Data aggregation is an efficient approach consisting of electing some processes in charge of aggregating data from a set of neighbors and writing the aggregated data into storage. Thus, the bandwidth use can be optimized while the contention is reduced. In this work, we take into account the network topology for mapping aggregators and we propose an optimized buffering system in order to reduce the aggregation cost. We validate our approach using micro-benchmarks and the I/O kernel of a large-scale cosmology simulation. We show improvements up to 15× faster for I/O operations compared to a standard implementation of MPI I/O

TAPIOCA: An I/O Library for Optimized Topology-Aware Data Aggregation on Large-Scale Supercomputers

International audienceReading and writing data efficiently from storage system is necessary for most scientific simulations to achieve good performance at scale. Many software solutions have been developed to decrease the I/O bottleneck. One well-known strategy, in the context of collective I/O operations, is the two-phase I/O scheme. This strategy consists of selecting a subset of processes to aggregate contiguous pieces of data before performing reads/writes. In this paper, we present TAPIOCA, an MPI-based library implementing an efficient topology-aware two-phase I/O algorithm. We show how TAPIOCA can take advantage of double-buffering and one-sided communication to reduce as much as possible the idle time during data aggregation. We also introduce our cost model leading to a topology-aware aggregator placement optimizing the movements of data. We validate our approach at large scale on two leadership-class supercomputers: Mira (IBM BG/Q) and Theta (Cray XC40). We present the results obtained with TAPIOCA on a micro-benchmark and the I/O kernel of a large-scale simulation. On both architectures, we show a substantial improvement of I/O performance compared with the default MPI I/O implementation. On BG/Q+GPFS, for instance, our algorithm leads to a performance improvement by a factor of twelve while on the Cray XC40 system associated with a Lustre filesystem, we achieve an improvement of four

Towards On-Demand I/O Forwarding in HPC Platforms

International audienceI/O forwarding is an established and widely-adopted technique in HPC to reduce contention and improve I/O performance in the access to shared storage infrastructure. On such machines, this layer is often physically deployed on dedicated nodes, and their connection to the clients is static. Furthermore, the increasingly heterogeneous workloads entering HPC installations stress the I/O stack, requiring tuning and reconfiguration based on the applications' characteristics.t Nonetheless, it is not always feasible in a production system to explore the potential benefits of this layer under different configurations without impacting clients. In this paper, we investigate the effects of I/O forwarding on performance by considering the application's I/O access patterns and system characteristics. We aim to explore when forwarding is the best choice for an application, how many I/O nodes it would benefit from, and whether not using forwarding at all might be the correct decision. To gather performance metrics, explore, and understand the impact of forwarding I/O requests of different access patterns, we implemented FORGE, a lightweight I/O forwarding layer in user-space. Using FORGE, we evaluated the optimal forwarding configurations for several access patterns on MareNostrum 4 (Spain) and Santos Dumont (Brazil) supercomputers. Our results demonstrate that shifting the focus from a static system-wide deployment to an on-demand reconfigurable I/O forwarding layer dictated by application demands can improve I/O performance on future machines

Argonne Leadership Computing Facility 2011 annual report : Shaping future supercomputing.

The ALCF's Early Science Program aims to prepare key applications for the architecture and scale of Mira and to solidify libraries and infrastructure that will pave the way for other future production applications. Two billion core-hours have been allocated to 16 Early Science projects on Mira. The projects, in addition to promising delivery of exciting new science, are all based on state-of-the-art, petascale, parallel applications. The project teams, in collaboration with ALCF staff and IBM, have undertaken intensive efforts to adapt their software to take advantage of Mira's Blue Gene/Q architecture, which, in a number of ways, is a precursor to future high-performance-computing architecture. The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) enables transformative science that solves some of the most difficult challenges in biology, chemistry, energy, climate, materials, physics, and other scientific realms. Users partnering with ALCF staff have reached research milestones previously unattainable, due to the ALCF's world-class supercomputing resources and expertise in computation science. In 2011, the ALCF's commitment to providing outstanding science and leadership-class resources was honored with several prestigious awards. Research on multiscale brain blood flow simulations was named a Gordon Bell Prize finalist. Intrepid, the ALCF's BG/P system, ranked No. 1 on the Graph 500 list for the second consecutive year. The next-generation BG/Q prototype again topped the Green500 list. Skilled experts at the ALCF enable researchers to conduct breakthrough science on the Blue Gene system in key ways. The Catalyst Team matches project PIs with experienced computational scientists to maximize and accelerate research in their specific scientific domains. The Performance Engineering Team facilitates the effective use of applications on the Blue Gene system by assessing and improving the algorithms used by applications and the techniques used to implement those algorithms. The Data Analytics and Visualization Team lends expertise in tools and methods for high-performance, post-processing of large datasets, interactive data exploration, batch visualization, and production visualization. The Operations Team ensures that system hardware and software work reliably and optimally; system tools are matched to the unique system architectures and scale of ALCF resources; the entire system software stack works smoothly together; and I/O performance issues, bug fixes, and requests for system software are addressed. The User Services and Outreach Team offers frontline services and support to existing and potential ALCF users. The team also provides marketing and outreach to users, DOE, and the broader community

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe increase in computational power of supercomputers is enabling complex scientific phenomena to be simulated at ever-increasing resolution and fidelity. With these simulations routinely producing large volumes of data, performing efficient I/O at this scale has become a very difficult task. Large-scale parallel writes are challenging due to the complex interdependencies between I/O middleware and hardware. Analytic-appropriate reads are traditionally hindered by bottlenecks in I/O access. Moreover, the two components of I/O, data generation from simulations (writes) and data exploration for analysis and visualization (reads), have substantially different data access requirements. Parallel writes, performed on supercomputers, often deploy aggregation strategies to permit large-sized contiguous access. Analysis and visualization tasks, usually performed on computationally modest resources, require fast access to localized subsets or multiresolution representations of the data. This dissertation tackles the problem of parallel I/O while bridging the gap between large-scale writes and analytics-appropriate reads. The focus of this work is to develop an end-to-end adaptive-resolution data movement framework that provides efficient I/O, while supporting the full spectrum of modern HPC hardware. This is achieved by developing technology for highly scalable and tunable parallel I/O, applicable to both traditional parallel data formats and multiresolution data formats, which are directly appropriate for analysis and visualization. To demonstrate the efficacy of the approach, a novel library (PIDX) is developed that is highly tunable and capable of adaptive-resolution parallel I/O to a multiresolution data format. Adaptive resolution storage and I/O, which allows subsets of a simulation to be accessed at varying spatial resolutions, can yield significant improvements to both the storage performance and I/O time. The library provides a set of parameters that controls the storage format and the nature of data aggregation across he network; further, a machine learning-based model is constructed that tunes these parameters for the maximum throughput. This work is empirically demonstrated by showing parallel I/O scaling up to 768K cores within a framework flexible enough to handle adaptive resolution I/O

Characterization and modeling of PIDX parallel I/O for performance optimization

pre-printParallel I/O library performance can vary greatly in re- sponse to user-tunable parameter values such as aggregator count, file count, and aggregation strategy. Unfortunately, manual selection of these values is time consuming and dependent on characteristics of the target machine, the underlying file system, and the dataset itself. Some characteristics, such as the amount of memory per core, can also impose hard constraints on the range of viable parameter values. In this work we address these problems by using machine learning techniques to model the performance of the PIDX parallel I/O library and select appropriate tunable parameter values. We characterize both the network and I/O phases of PIDX on a Cray XE6 as well as an IBM Blue Gene/P system. We use the results of this study to develop a machine learning model for parameter space exploration and performance prediction

ASCR/HEP Exascale Requirements Review Report

This draft report summarizes and details the findings, results, and recommendations derived from the ASCR/HEP Exascale Requirements Review meeting held in June, 2015. The main conclusions are as follows. 1) Larger, more capable computing and data facilities are needed to support HEP science goals in all three frontiers: Energy, Intensity, and Cosmic. The expected scale of the demand at the 2025 timescale is at least two orders of magnitude -- and in some cases greater -- than that available currently. 2) The growth rate of data produced by simulations is overwhelming the current ability, of both facilities and researchers, to store and analyze it. Additional resources and new techniques for data analysis are urgently needed. 3) Data rates and volumes from HEP experimental facilities are also straining the ability to store and analyze large and complex data volumes. Appropriately configured leadership-class facilities can play a transformational role in enabling scientific discovery from these datasets. 4) A close integration of HPC simulation and data analysis will aid greatly in interpreting results from HEP experiments. Such an integration will minimize data movement and facilitate interdependent workflows. 5) Long-range planning between HEP and ASCR will be required to meet HEP's research needs. To best use ASCR HPC resources the experimental HEP program needs a) an established long-term plan for access to ASCR computational and data resources, b) an ability to map workflows onto HPC resources, c) the ability for ASCR facilities to accommodate workflows run by collaborations that can have thousands of individual members, d) to transition codes to the next-generation HPC platforms that will be available at ASCR facilities, e) to build up and train a workforce capable of developing and using simulations and analysis to support HEP scientific research on next-generation systems.Comment: 77 pages, 13 Figures; draft report, subject to further revisio