an overview of the blue genestronglstrong system software organization.pdfVIP

An Overview of the Blue Gene/L System Software Organization George Almasi´ , Ralph Bellofatto , Jose´ Brunheroto , Calin˘ Cas¸caval , Jose´ G. Castanos˜ , Luis Ceze , Paul Crumley , C. Christopher Erway , Joseph Gagliano ,
Derek Lieber , Xavier Martorell , Jose´ E. Moreira , Alda Sanomiya , and Karin Strauss
 IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0218  gheorghe,ralphbel,brunhe,cascaval,castanos,pgc,erway, jgaglia,lieber,xavim,jmoreira,sanomiya @  Department of Computer Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urabana, IL 61801  luisceze,kstrauss @ Abstract. The Blue Gene/L supercomputer will use system-on-a-chip integra- tion and a highly scalable cellular architecture. With 65,536 compute nodes, Blue Gene/L represents a new level of complexity for parallel system software, with specific challenges in the areas of scalability, maintenance and usability. In this paper we present our vision of a software architecture that faces up to these challenges, and the simulation framework that we have used for our experiments. 1 Introduction In November 2001 IBM announced a partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to build the Blue Gene/L (BG/L) supercomputer, a 65,536-node machine de- signed around embedded PowerPC processors. Through the use of system-on-a-chip in- tegration [10], coupled with a highly scalable cellular architecture, Blue Gene/L will de- liver 180 or 360 Teraflops of peak computing power, depending on the utilization mode. Blue Gene/L represents a new level of scal