May 23-25, 2001 Indian Wells, California, USA
Final Program Abstracts SGI Focused Program
Session Day	Session Number	Session Time	Presentation Title	Author(s)	Abstract
Thursday	3A	2:30	Partitioning on Origin 3000 and SNIA	Russ Anderson, SGI	An overview of RAS features in Irix, with emphasis on partitioning and error recovery.
Thursday	3B	2:00	Data Migration Facility 3.0, Client/Server Model	Thomas Goozen, SGI	This paper will explain the architecture of DMF 3.0, expounding upon the details of both the client and server functionalities. The paper will also discuss the business case for the development of DMF 3.0 and lastly how DMF 3.0 will integrate with third party backup solutions software such as Legato's Networker.
Thursday	3C	2:00	Early Experiences with the Developed Virtual User Account	Norbert Meyer, Miroslaw Kupc, Marcin Lawenda, and Pawel Wolniewicz (POZNAN)	The Virtual User Account (VUS) is a mechanism, which significantly simplifies the user's management process in a national GRID structure, which connects supercomputer systems geographically distributed and belonging to different independent institutions. The mechanism was implemented within the Polish national cluster. The concept of the VUS was presented last year at the CUG Summit 2000. The paper will describe the efficiency of the system running in a GRID environment.
Thursday	3A	3:00	Job Scheduling Techniques for Large Origin Systems	Steve Caruso, SGI	We describe effective job scheduling techniques for large Origin systems. The use of a batch scheduler such as LSF coupled with dynamic cpusets is discussed along with an illustration of the benefits of this scheduling technique. Also described is a pre-emptive, priority scheduling scheme that SGI is currently developing for an operational weather site. The scheme utilizes current and future features in LSF and IRIX, including cpusets, in addition to custom software developed by SGI. The scheduler will permit high priority jobs to acquire the required computational resources by pre-empting lower priority interactive and batch jobs. When the high priority jobs have completed, pre-empted jobs are resumed. The scheduler also utilizes dynamic cpusets to reduce runtime variability. Relevant tunable system parameters are described.
Thursday	3B	2:30	SGI CXFS Overview, Current Status and Future Plans	Neil Bannister, SGI	Silicon Graphics released its Clustered File-System, CXFS, at the end of 1999. Since that date is has gained good acceptance amongst SGI customers and it continues to be deployed for large storage requirements. This paper will give an overview of CXFS and how customers are using it. It will also cover how it is integrated into SGI's storage solutions, current status and future plans.
Thursday	3C	2:30	An Early Experience on Job Checkpoint/Restart - Working with SGI IRIX OS and the Portable Batch System (PBS) Click here for slides	Yan-Tyng Chang (NAS)	In this paper, we described the use of SGI cpr utility for job checkpoint/restart for two types of applications, gaussian and mpi jobs. Both interactive jobs and batch jobs were tested.
Thursday	3A	3:00	IRIX OS Update	Lynne Johnson, SGI	This talk will cover the work SGI is doing on IRIX in support of high performance computing. An update on accomplishments for the previous year, and a road map for the next year will be presented.
Thursday	3B	3:00	SGI CXFS Overview, Current Status and Future Plans	Neil Bannister, SGI	Silicon Graphics released its Clustered File-System, CXFS, at the end of 1999. Since that date is has gained good acceptance amongst SGI customers and it continues to be deployed for large storage requirements. This paper will give an overview of CXFS and how customers are using it. It will also cover how it is integrated into SGI's storage solutions, current status and future plans.
Thursday	3C	3:00	Supporting Users of the NAS Facility at the NASA Ames Research Center Click here for slides	Chuck Niggley and Ed Hook (NAS)	The NAS facility provides both production computing resources and test bed research & development resources to local users and groups as well as the other NASA Centers, our industrial partners and University collaborators. The presentation will discuss how these services are provided and present statistics dealing with the user support activities.
Thursday	4A	4:00	'SNIA' Product Directions	Steve Reinhardt, SGI	SGI's Itanium-based SNIA systems will deliver strong processor and interconnect performance. The Linux OS will be suitable for some, but not all, workloads. This talk will cover project directions and status, and guidance on which workloads will be early candidates for SNIA.
Thursday	4B	4:00	SGI SAN/CXFS/FailSafe/DMF Demonstration	Dave Ellis and Linda Lait, SGI	We will build and demonstrate a Storage Area Network (SAN) based Clustered XFS (CXFS) environment, running DMF under FailSafe protection. We will also discuss performance characteristics of the SAN and make recommendations for setting up applications on a shared filesystem.
Thursday	4C	4:00	Performance Metrics: SPEC Gigaflops vs. Linpack Gigaflops	Tom Elken, SGI	(no abstract; slides only)
Friday	5A	8:30	Efficient Data-Parallel Programming on cc-NUMA Machines	Siegfried Benkner, SGI and Thomas Brandes (GMD)	In this presentation we describe optimized parallelization strategies for high-level data-parallel programs programs on cc-Numa machines that avail itself with the mechanisms provided by OpenMP for work sharing and thread parallelism while exploiting data locality based on user-specified distribution directives. We discuss how such parallelization strategies can be controlled by the programmer at a high-level by means of OpenMP-like extensions to High Performance Fortran (HPF). Performance results on an SGI Origin 2000 using the ADAPTOR and VFC compilers show the effectiveness of our approach in comparison to traditional HPF and OpenMP parallelization strategies.
Friday	5B	8:30	From Elsa to Teras: How to Guide Users from a Vector System to a Huge Parallel System	Bert Van Corler (SARA)	In November 2000 a 1024-node SGI Origin 3800 was placed at SARA. An overview will be presented of the system, but especially of what the consequences were for the end users. The transition started more than half a year before the arrival of the Origin system.
Friday	5C	8:30	The HPC Virtual Consultant Click here for slides	Sally Haerer (OR-ST)	Funded through a DoD-related grant, the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science & Engineering (NACSE) at Oregon State University has established a collaboration to create a web-based, search-and-query interface that will provide a portal to a variety of excellent online documentation sites around the country. This will allow programmers and technical consultants alike to learn just one common access point, one navigational hierarchy and information strategy, and one search mechanism, yet have access to a vast amount of information and expertise from distributed sites. By providing consolidated access to a wide variety of Web resources, the Virtual Consultant will allow users to benefit from materials they would not be able to find on their own. By removing the need to learn and traverse multiple Web sites, more time can be spent directly on problem-solving. Furthermore, the development of a model for a common, distributed web-based documentation strategy means that other targeted search-and-query interfaces could be engineered in the future with much less lead-time and resources than this venture.
Friday	5A	9:00	Topology Aware Scheduling in the LSF Distributed Resource Manager	Chris Smith, Bill McMillan, and Ian Lumb, Platform Computing	Consistent and optimal application performance are identified issues for NUMA-based architectures. Often these inconsistencies and resulting sub-optimal performance are a consequence of memory-locality latency. Production-quality solutions need to simultaneously allow for flexibility in parallel job placement algorithms, and provide a rich framework for managing all the distributed compute resources. Through integration with SGI IRIX's cpusets functionality, Platform Computing's Load Sharing Facility (LSF) is empowered with topological knowledge of the Origin family's ccNUMA architecture. Preliminary results from customer sites illustrate the performance advantages that can be achieved in practice.
Friday	5B	9:00	PBS Pro Workload Management: Preemption and Reservations	Bill Nitzberg, SGI and James Jones, Veridian	Case studies of the Portable Batch System (PBS) on Cray SV1, Cray T3E, SGI Origin 2000 and SGI Origin 3000 are presented with a short discussion to include: tens of thousands of jobs; managing thousands of cpu's with one login system; partitioning a system to meet different user requirements; using cpusets to manage jobs on large SGI Origins; using suspend/resume and preemptive scheduling to assist power users; using PBS Pro's advance reservation feature. A road map of PBS Pro including Linux and vendor relationships will conclude the presentation.
Friday	5C	9:00	Networking Update	George Hyman, SGI	(no abstract; slides only)
Friday	5A	9:30	Large Shared Memory Systems Click here for slides	Bob Ciotti (NAS)	The Numerical Aerospace Simulation (NAS) Facility has pioneered four firsts in large shared memory systems. A 256p O2K system in 1998 and a 512p O2K system in 1999. More recently a 512p and 1024p O3K systems in 2001. This paper reviews the progress made in this approach and provides early results from the latest 512p and 1024p system.
Friday	5B	9:30	Experiences Using the Portable Batch System on Large Origin Systems	Edward Hook (NAS)	Large SGI Origin systems (larger than the original design envisioned) require the use of "coarse mode" addressing in jobs using many CPUs. This paper describes the design/implementation/deployment of a PBS scheduler that shields users from the effects of coarse mode addressing, while giving them the benefits that come from the use of cpusets.
Friday	6A	11:00	Beyond Beowulf Clustering	Ian Lumb, SGI and Bill McMillan, Platform	First-generation Beowulf clusters have clearly demonstrated that powerful computing environments can be build around COTS hardware and networking components, parallel programming involving PVM or MPI, with system software as the 'glue' that provides the abstraction of a distributed process space. As scientists and engineers increasingly employ these clusters in practice, two fundamental manageability issues are becoming increasingly prohibitive. Thus administration of the environment, and management of the workload, is addressed here through distributed resource management solutions involving Platform Computing's Load Sharing Facility (LSF).
Friday	6B	11:00	Early Experiences with Storage Area Networks and CXFS Click here for slides	John Lynch, SGI	This paper looks at the design, integration and application issues involved in deploying an early access, very large, highly available storage area network. Covered are topics from filesystem failover, issues regarding numbers of nodes in a cluster, and using leading edge solutions to solve complex issues in a real-time data processing network.
Friday	6C	11:00	SGI Message-Passing Status and Plans Click here for slides	Karl Feind, SGI	SGI message-passing software has been enhanced in the past year to support additional interconnect fabrics, improve NUMA-awareness, increase MPI-2 content, and provide other improvements. This presentation describes the recent enhancements to MPI and SHMEM software and also outlines our roadmap of planned future enhancements.
Friday	6A	11:30	HPC Linux Update	Bill Roske, SGI	Progress has been made in Linux for HPC customers on SGI's Intel based platforms. This talk covers progress and plans for Linux functionality needed by our HPC customers.
Friday	6B	11:30	Storage Architecture Choice: SAN or NAS	LaNet Merrill, SGI	What should a company look at before deciding to use SAN versus NAS? This paper looks at the application requirement, the security requirement, the performance requirement, the scaling requirement and the data management requirement. It includes comparisons between SAN and NAS as well as products that meet both requirements.
Friday	6C	11:30	Some Performance Comparisions for an Ocean Model on the SGI Origin 2000 and the HP V-class 2500	Benny Cheng (JPL)	Using a state-of-the-art ocean circulation model, we compare the performance of the code on an SGI Origin 2000 and an HP V2500, and discuss some of the reasons behind the differences in the results.
Friday	6A	12:00	LINUX–The Changing Market Dynamics	Paul McNamara, SGI	This paper will discuss the market acceptance of LINUX and its future.
Friday	6B	12:00	Performance Analysis Benchmark of the SGI TP9400	William Julien (BCS)	This paper will discuss our experience with the performance of SGI's TP9400 RAID Storage Array. Using the standard SGI diskperf performance testing utility and a locally written benchmark, we will demonstrate what actual performance improvements that can be expected over locally connected XFS scsi filesystems. We benchmarked the TP9400 using a shared connection via a Brocade switch between a desk-side Origin 2000 and an Onyx systems. This paper will present our findings of the thoughput for each system using dedicated partitions and a CXFS shared filesystem.
Friday	6C	12:00	An Inexpensive Platform for Computational Chemistry Applications	Haibo Wang, Ken Rosetti, and Amanda W. Wu (MCSR)	We built up a Linux cluster with a lot of inexpensive disk and memory to carry out the large Gaussian and Gamess jobs, which cannot be finished during the regular system maintenance cycle and these jobs are unable to restart from checkpoint file. Performance benchmark and tuning have been carried out and a model for the production system has been tested and planned.
Friday	7A	2:00	Operating Systems SIG Open Meeting	Chuck Keagle (BCS), Virginia Bedford (ARSC), Tina Butler (NERSC), John Mulholland (CSE), and Cheryl Wampler (LANL)	This Open meeting will focus on IRIX, LINUX, and IRIX Security. Following brief introductions of the Focus Chairs, we will discuss any unanswered questions members might have concerning SGI, IRIX, LINUX, Origin 2000, Origin 3000, Onyx, and IRIX Security. SGI Liaisons and technical experts will be available to comment on various issues. We will also discuss CUG issues such as the SUMMIT format, presentation content, and ways to make CUG better serve its members.
Friday	7A	2:45	Programming Environments SIG Open Meeting	Hans-Hermann Frese (ZIB), David Gigrich, (BCS), and Guy Robinson (ARSC)	The Programming Environments SIG invites you to attend its Open Meeting on Friday afternoon. After a brief introduction of the SIG's business and Focus areas, we shall start off with a life discussion on various issues concerning Programming Environments, Compilers and Libraries, and Software Tools. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss their concerns with the liaisons and technical experts from SGI. Your feedback for the SIG's business and recommendations on future activities will be gratefully acknowledged.
Friday	7B	2:45	Communications and Data Management SIG Open Meeting	Kevin Wohlever (OSC) and Paul Anderson (DOD)	This will be a SIG meeting during the SGI portion of the conference. Normal SIG business will be done, including getting additional volunteers to assist with the SIG.
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