Next generation of Exascale-class systems: ExaNeSt project and the status of its interconnect and storage development

The ExaNeSt project started on December 2015 and is funded by EU H2020 research framework (call H2020-FETHPC-2014, n. 671553) to study the adoption of low-cost, Linux-based power-efficient 64-bit ARM processors clusters for Exascale-class systems. The ExaNeSt consortium pools partners with industrial and academic research expertise in storage, interconnects and applications that share a vision of an European Exascale-class supercomputer. The common goal is designing and implementing a physical rack prototype together with its cooling system, the non-volatile memory (NVM) architecture and a unified low-latency interconnect able to test different options for network and storage. Furthermore, the consortium goal is to provide real HPC applications to validate the system. In this paper we describe the unified data and storage network architecture, reporting on the status of development of different testbeds and highlighting preliminary benchmark results obtained through the execution of scientific, engineering and data analytics scalable application kernels

Shall Numerical Astrophysics Step Into the Era of Exascale Computing?

High performance computing numerical simulations are today one of the more effective instruments to implement and study new theoretical models, and they are mandatory during the preparatory phase and operational phase of any scientific experiment. New challenges in Cosmology and Astrophysics will require a large number of new extremely computationally intensive simulations to investigate physical processes at different scales. Moreover, the size and complexity of the new generation of observational facilities also implies a new generation of high performance data reduction and analysis tools pushing toward the use of Exascale computing capabilities. Exascale supercomputers cannot be produced today. We discuss the major technological challenges in the design, development and use of such computing capabilities and we will report on the progresses that has been made in the last years in Europe, in particular in the framework of the ExaNeSt European funded project. We also discuss the impact of these new computing resources on the numerical codes in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Telegraphos: High-Speed Communications Architecture for Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems

ABSTRACT: Telegraphos is an R&D project in computer communication. It useshardware switches for building high-speed multiprocessor or local area networks; preventive flow control eliminates packet dropping, and dedicated buffers per VCoffer congestion tolerance. The network interfaces have low complexity because they never need to retransmit packets, and because they use a single address space archi-tecture. Message passing is done with the remote write primitive; overhead is minimized because address translation also performs message protection. Other remotememory operations, including eager updates and hardware monitors, provide effective and low-cost support for virtual shared memory. Telegraphos I, our first proto-type, is currently being built