RuggedPOD as a Personal SuperComputer (Use
Case)
<[email protected]>
This is a use case for RuggedPOD:
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What if RuggedPOD could be used as a personal
supercomputer?
"Imagine a beowulf of these" (/. formerly "News for Nerds.
Stuff that Matter"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot)
What is a personal supercomputer?
As almost always, wikipedia has the answer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_supercomputer
"A personal supercomputer (PSC) is a high-performance computer
system with capabilities and costs between those of standard
personal computers and supercomputers. They allow an individual
or organization to have access to a significant amount of computing
power and are often used for a single purpose. They are typically
built by the user, but commercial models are available. Although
considerably more expensive than a personal computer, PSCs are
affordable to many people."
Some examples of personal supercomputers
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2006 Tyan PSC http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/
07/tyan_unveils_typhoon/
2009 SGI Octane III
2009 http://insidehpc.com/2009/11/
doug-eadline-unveils-desktop-supercomputer/
2010 Cray CX1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CX1
http://www.cray.com/Assets/PDF/products/cx1/CX1_
brochure.pdf
2013 Limulus boxen https://scalability.org/?p=6528
2014 rwmj virtualization cluster
https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/
caseless-virtualization-cluster-part-5
Tyan PSC (2006)
Tyan PSC (2006)
SGI Octane III (2009)
Cray XC1 (2010)
rwmj virtualization cluster (2014)
limulus
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http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7835/ "Moving HPC
Closer to The Desktop 2010"
Retrospective
"Personal supercomputers: past, present and future"
http://www.hpcadvisorycouncil.com/events/2012/
China-Conference/Presos/5_NCIC.pdf
What constitutes a pHPC?
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High performance: At least 10 times of high-end PC
High reliability
Low cost/Low power consumption: 2~3KW/Low Noise < 70dB
Desktop/Deskside footprint
User friendly (Programming/Management/Use)
What is it useful for?
It is useful to democratize supercomputing.
A developer can easily develop code on her PSC, before deploying it
on bigger supercomputers. A enormous challenge for the years to
come is the transformation of all running sequential code into
parallel code, because "the free lunch is over" since single core
stopped increasing performance. A personal supercomputer allows
to learn parallel programming techniques. The most popular is MPI
Message Passing Interface, which is used for the most scalable
codes. Other techniques like OpenMP, OpenCL, Cuda could be
used but are already available outside of a PSC.
For the success of a technology (here parallel programming), it is
essential that the technology reaches the maximum number of
people. This is a lesson of Itanium vs. x86, where no consumer
CPU and machines were produced (one or 2 exceptions).
What are RuggedPOD advantages?
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more affordable than existing machines. 999.99e would be a
good target for hobbyist programmers. Options could raise the
price for professional programmers (that is programmers who
do not pay for their machines).
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almost silent: no fan (needs noise measurement, e.g. pumps)
this is a must for programmers
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fully open (hardware, firmware, software): hackable and fun.
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more realistic than Raspberry Pi clusters, or virtual clusters.
Binary compatibility, toolchain compatible with "real"
supercomputers.
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commodity components (Raspberry PI, mini-ITX/micro-ATX
motherboards, netgear switch,...)
What kind of performance can be expected?
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1 TeraFLOP/s is doable (single accelerator cards can already
do it).
What is 1 TF/s?
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1996 ASCI Red: 1996 1TF/s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCI_Red
2001 Tera1: 5 TF/s
http://www-hpc.cea.fr/en/complexe/tera.htm
2006 Tera10: 43 TF/s
http://www-hpc.cea.fr/en/complexe/history.htm
2011 Tera100, Curie, Helios: ~1 PF/s (1024 TF/s)
2014 Tianhe-2: 34 PF/s, 17MW
2018-2020 Exascale: 1 EF/s (1024 PF/s, 1018 F/s), 20MW
Pause: Do we need an Exascale supercomputer?
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I think maybe. (Did we need to go to the moon?)
Some think maybe not http://www.ccs3.lanl.gov/
~pakin/papers/salishan2012.pdf (1 EF/s supercomputer
vs. 1024 PF/s supercomputers)
BUT, I need a 1 TF/s PSC!!! I will BUY it!!! I am SURE at
least 50 nerds in the world would buy it too!!!
1 EF/s is 1,048,576 RuggedPOD at 1 TF/s :-)
Are we there yet?
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second prototype of RuggedPOD is almost there.
Beowulf?
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Having a "real" interconnect (like 2D Torus with Kalray chips)
rather than 1Gb ethernet would be an advantage, but would
likely raise the price and make it unaffordable for the HPC
enthusiast.
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This is a use case for a "mesocentre"
Hackability?
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Architecture should not be set in stone: a filled RuggedPOD
should be an example of what can be done, not of what
should be done.
Example: RuggedPOD can be oil-cooled, but air-cooled should
be possible (user use fans, reduce the number of motherboards,
...)
Example: Raspberry (1) B+ is used but any other card should
be possible:
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Example: not only the hardware model, but the architecture
could be tweaked:
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Raspberry 2 B
Arduino
Beagleboard
One DonglePI per motherboard, instead of on global RPI.
https://github.com/gbin/DonglePi
The core of RuggedPOD is this: an high-quality (aluminium)
case with metal foam, whose hardware inside can be changed