Objective: To test and evaluate the hardware and software capabilities of the Convex Exemplar Scalable Parallel Processor (SPP-1000) and to determine its viability as a high performance data storage server. To assess the importance of cache coherence for Earth and space science problems.
Approach: Acquire a Convex Exemplar SPP-1000 with multiple hypernodes (8 processors each) in order to measure performance and scalability of the architecture (and software). Port the ESS Parallel Benchmark Working Set to the Exemplar to test all aspects of system performance, including effective processor performance, cache behavior, memory access latency, efficiency of parallel flow control, and parallel I/O performance. Connect the Exemplar to the HPCC/ESS Storage Tek WolfCreek silo and serve as an early BETA test site for Convex UniTree software. This will enable ESS to test the Exemplar throughput as a data storage server. Work with Convex to improve performance by parallelizing UniTree. A parallelized data storage system running on a high performance computing platform will be critical to the future success of the Earth and Space Science community, as data storage requirements of the Earth Observing System by the turn of the century will total three terabytes per day. The Convex Exemplar is a good candidate to serve this role based on Convex's experience as a data storage server with their C-series machines running UniTree.
Significance: The evaluation of the Convex Exemplar provides an opportunity to (1) test a new, unique high performance computing architecture capable of becoming a teraFLOPS scalable system, and (2) work closely with a vendor to develop a high performance mass storage server, whose absence is now the weakest link in the high performance computing arena.
Status/Plans: In FY95 ESS will open the system to the ESS user community, once the Global Shared Memory hardware and software are available. ESS will do further testing of SPP-1000 performance scalability and efficiency as system software matures. ESS will install a BETA version of the UniTree software (ported to the Exemplar) and connect the system to the STK WolfCreek in order to test performance as a data storage system. ESS will then work with Convex engineers to parallelize the tape reads and writes and the network I/O.
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