Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium

4:15PM, Wednesday, March 31, 2004
NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03
http://ee380.stanford.edu

petaFLOP/s systems and changing the nature of science
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the petaFLOP/s

Mark Seager
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
About the talk:

There are now several practical petaFLOP/s architectures that can be built in the 2007-2009 timeframe. We discuss several alternative architectures and the implications for applications development. We use the IBM BlueGene/L (http://www.llnl.gov/asci/platforms/bluegenel/) design and the SRC MAP (http://www.srccomputers.com/HardwareElements.htm#MAPProcessor) designs as starting points for the discussion. In addition, we show the high-level architecture of a simulation environment being built at LLNL to support 10s teraFLOP/s, going to 100s teraFLOP/s simulations and how this might scale to petaFLOP/s.

Using this environment, we have produced simulations in several areas of Science that have pushed back the boundaries of scientific knowledge before theory and experiments were able to. With this experience it occurs to us that the with the advent of 10s --> 100s teraFLOP/s computing, the nature of science is changing. We review some of the scientific areas that will be impacted at LLNL by the BlueGene/L platform.

About the speaker:

Dr. Seager received his B.S. Degree in Mathematics and Astrophysics at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque in 1979 and received his PhD in Numerical Analysis from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984. Mark started working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1983 and has been working in the field of parallel processing ever since. He manages the Platforms Program for the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASCI) Program at LLNL and has successfully managed partnership to successfly deply architectures such as ASCI Blue Pacific (3.9 TF/s in 1998), ASCI White (12.3 TF/s in 2000) and the powerful LLNL Linux clusters (MCR at 11.3 TF/s in 2002 and Thunder at 23 TF/s in 2004). He is currently managing the IBM contract for ASCI Purple (100 TF/s in 2H05) and BlueGene/L (180/360 TF/s in 1H2005). His current interests include advanced technology and scalable systems architecture, performance and commodity based high performance computing.

Contact information:

Mark Seager
7000 East Ave
POBOX 808, L-60
Livermore, CA 94551
925-423-3141
925-423-8715
seager@llnl.gov