Talk Notes

Comparative Benchmarking

Andy Turner

Can benchmarking help users answer, ‘where’s best to run my code?’ More generally ‘What is benchmarking, who is it for, what is it for?’

HECBioSim, James Gebbie
  • Supporting users from consortia, experimentalists, not HPC experts
  • Code choice,
  • Potential (molecular interactions) choice
GW4 Isambard
  • Comparison across CPU types
  • Mem vs CPU bound
Open Source Benchmarking
  • Aim is to develop quantitatitve comparison
  • Publications, not open science
  • As far as possible compilation details, simulation inputs, job scripts included
Purpose
  • Help users, RSEs, to make informed choice/advise on best approach
  • Develop suite for and dataset of hpc-uk/archer benchmarks
Comments
  • Would be good to include profiling as part of benchmarking to better understand code and system performance/scaling.
  • Ideally RSEs and users can work together to improve efficiency/use of resources

POP

Jon Gibson

ERC funded project
  • Phase 1 10/2015-3/2018
  • Phase 2 11/2018 - 10/21
  • Providing free services
  • To Academic and Industrial
Aim to deliver
  • Precise understanding of parallel application
  • All areas/platforms/scales
  • Projects have been 50:25:25, Academia, Industry, Government/Public sector
Developed expertise in profiler tools:
  • BSC tools, extrae, paraver
  • Scalasca
  • Vtune/others
Typical project:
  • Performance assessment report
  • Load balancing
  • Proof of concept, + software demonstrator
Case studies:
  • k-wave, C++ hybrid mpi-openmp refactor periodic domains
  • Quantum Espresso, I/O by mpi processes not parallelised, 450 improvement in performance for write, increased scalability.

Pop services, free at point of use Code developers, code users

Webinars: 18th October 14:00 MPI+X Hybrid parallelisation

POP Website

Supercomputing Wales

Mark Dawson

What is it?
  • Successor to HPC Wales
  • £15m Welsh government investment
  • Cardiff and Swansea dominated, also at Aberystwyth, Bangor
  • Mix of capability and capacity machines
  • Also RSE support
Different models at each University:
  • Cardiff group embedded RSEs
  • Swansea etc, Central group, HPC-centric

Supercomputing Wales

A Whilestlestop Tour of Isambard Hacks

James Grant

3 Hackathons/Events:
  • 1st Porting 5 TOP10 Archer codes on test installations
  • 2nd Porting remaining TOP10 on upgraded hardware
  • Results presented at SC17 and CUG2018
  • Further Hackevent to discuss policy
Hackathon
  • Hands on events
  • Learning about systems/libraries/tools
  • Compiling and profiling
  • Good for developing communities within centre and with code developers
Havkevent
  • More about documentation:
  • Policy
  • Practicalities
  • Documentation
  • Training material
  • Developing OPS-RSE community
Future events
  • To prepare for delivery
  • For supporters/OPs/RSEs
  • Potential users/test users
  • Final Hackathon for interested parties?
HPC Champions
  • Would this work regionally/nationally for other centres/champions events
  • Would a National symposuim/conference in HPC with co-located workshops be of interest.
  • And how would it work for a mixed audience of users, RSEs and supporters

Arm: Porting HPC Applications to Arm

Phil Ridley

Arm HPC role
  • Isambard
  • Catalyst HPE Machines
  • ARM (formerly Allinea) MAP, DDT, Performance Reports
  • OpenSource software stack
  • LLVM and GCC Arm enhanced compilers
  • OpenHPC now out
  • Community building for HPC apps porting and perofmrance.
  • https://gitlab.com/arm-hpc/
  • arm compiler: llvm backend, issues underliying in compiler will persist
  • SVE support, for once it is incorporated, instructions can already be generated
  • Performance library, new version due out around SC18 (v19)
  • Some know issues with config.guess and libtool

Archer/HPC Champions

Alan Simpson

Past, future
  • Original discussion EPCC, CLare Gryce (UCL) EPSRC
  • Outreach research grant
  • RSEs in HPC support
  • Co-located with HPC-SIG and other events
  • Interactive workshops
  • RSE network supporting HPC/each other
  • Career development
  • A part of diversity/Engagement/Outreach/Impact
What is a champion?
  • Regional/national/early career user/anyone intersted
Need a specific archer champions link!
Opportunity to sell ourselves
  • HPC Champions
  • Training Champions
  • Funders
Existential: Do we want to continue:
Scope:
  • Lessons Learned:
  • Content:
  • Logistics:
Make users aware of usable systems.
  • Tier 3
  • Tier 2
  • Tier 1
  • Tier 0
  • {Cloud?}
Discussion comments:
  • 30 responses 50% All, 40% All academic, 10% Champion
  • Inclusive, Ops who don’t necessarily get funding, ignored
  • Lightning problems
  • Commentary on HPC-SIG
  • Champions includes RSE/Ops/Users
  • Bios of champions? who what where when
  • Links centres, include contacts and leads, champions associated with clusters

Champions Poll