ebook img

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 20040006455: Fast I/O for Massively Parallel Applications PDF

5 Pages·0.35 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 20040006455: Fast I/O for Massively Parallel Applications

. NASA ~ Report Documentation Page Report No. 2. Governmen! P.ccession No. 3. Recipient's Catalog No. 5. Rep~ o~~r t Date ~ 3. Performing organization Code Author(s) 3. Performing Organization Report No. latthew T. O'Keefe IO. Work Unit No. Performing Organization Name and Address lniversity of Minnesota 100 Washington Avenue South 11. Contract or Grant No. NAS5-32337 linneapolis, MN 55415 -12 26 USRA subcontract No. 5555-23 ?.S ponsoring Agency Name and Address 13. Type of Report and Period Covered Final National Aeronautics and Space Administration July 1993 - October 1996 Washington, DC 20546-0001 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 14. Sponsoring Agency Code Greenbelt, MD 20771 5. Supplementary Notes This work was performed under a subcontract issued by Universities Space Research Association 10227 Wincopin Circle, Suite 212 Columbia, MD 21 044 Task 23 5. Abstract The two primary goals for this report were the design, contruction and modeling of parallel disk arrays for scientific visualization and animation, and a study of the IO requirements of highly parallel applications. In addition, further work in parallel display systems required to project and animate the very high-resolution frames resulting from our supercomputing simulations in ocean circulation and compressible gas dynamics. 7. Key Words (Suggested by Author@)) 18. Distribution Statement isk arrays and parallel systems Unclassifi ed--Unlimited 3. Security Classif. (of this report) 20. Security Classif. (of this page) 21. No. of Pages 22. Price Unclassified Unclassified 1 Final Report Fast YO for Massively Parallel Applications USRA Grant No. 5555-23 National Aeronautics and Space Administration Program Director: Dr. Terence Pratt Principal Investigator: Dr. Matthew T. 0’ Keefe Overview The two primary goals for this research were the design, construction and modeling of parallel disk arrays for scientific visualization and animation, and a study of the IO requirements of highly parallel applications. In addition, we pursued further work in parallel display systems required to project and animate the very high-resolution frames resulting from our supercomputing simulations in ocean circulation and compressible gas dynamics. Results and Transitions With major additional support from the Army Research Office, NSF, and our corporate sponsors we constructed, modeled and measured several large parallel disk arrays. These + arrays consisted of Ciprico 6700 RAID-3 devices (8 data 1 parity drive) combined together in a variety of configurations, from a group of 8 RAID-3 from which we achieved nearly 100 MBytedsecond transfer speed to a 31 array system that achieved a record 500 MByteshecond. These large bandwidths are necessary to support the high-resolution frame rates we require for the 2400x3200 pixel Powerwall parallel display system. In addition to constructing these disk systems and measuring their performance, we developed performance models that capture many of the performance-limiting effects, such as start-up delays on RAID devices, fragmentation, and virtual memory page management overhead for very large transfers. We developed new techniques for instrumenting the kernel for taking filesystem performance data. Other projects including performance measurements and experiments with D2 Helical Scan tapes from Ampex Corporation. We verified tape performance exceeding 15 MBytedsecond for large transfers using the Ampex DST 310 tape device. In addition, Thomas Ruwart collaborated with storage vendor MTI on the construction of a 1-Terabyte filesystem using a collection of MTI RAID arrays. Using the high speed disk subsystems to supply the bandwidth, we constructed a 4 panel Powerwall dispiay system in our NSF-support Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering following our successful (and partially NAS A-sponsored) prototype at the Supercomputing ‘94 conference. A critical component of this system is the software that allows parallel rendering across the separate but seamlessly connected panels. Russell Catellan was partially supported by NASA to construct this sofware, which includes a version of XRaz used for scientific animation and also a modified version of VIZ, a 3D volume renderer developed in Norway. The Powerwall has inspired a host of imitations throughout the HPC community, including NASA Goddard. It is useful for a variety of high-resolution display applications, including our primary mission of visualizing and analyzing datasets generated by our simulation software on supercomputers. Finally, we developed a package for performing parallel IO on the Cray T3D machine that is used by our regular grid applications such as the Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model. This software is portable to other platforms, including the SGI Challenge class machines. NASA support has helped produce two MS students and approximately 8 techical papers, as well as a variety of software and other research products, such as movies used by other researchers. Graduate Theses Supported Student’s Name -Date Degree Thesis Title Steve Soltis June 1995 Masters Instrumenting a UNIX Kernel for Event Tracing Derek Lee Feb 1995 Masters Scientific Animation Jeff Stromberg pending Masters Performance Effects of File Fragmentation . Research Products [I] Digital Movies: MPEG movies from the calculation described in journal reference [ 1 11 are available on the WM%‘ at URL address: ‘‘http://www- mount. ee.u mn.e dd-dereklee/micom_movies/micom_movies. htmZ”. These movies were recently reference by Semtner in his article on computer simulations of Ocean circulation which appeared in the September issue of Science. As of November 16th, there have been 1557 accesses to this Web page. Actual data from our runs is also available at the Web site. [2] The PowerWall Project: in collaboration with Paul Woodward’s team and several computer vendors, including Silicon Graphics Inc., Ciprico Inc., and IBM, my group helped to construct and demonstrate a high-resolution display system for datasets resulting from supercomputer simulations, medical imaging, and others. My group helped in the control software, data preparation and processing, and the actual physical constrution. This system was demonstrated at the Supercomputing ‘94 conference and was described in conference publication [21]. A Powerwall, funded through an NSF CISE grant and witrh partial support from NASA and additional equipment grants from SGI and others, is now in operation in IT’SL aboratory for Computational Science and Engineering. See our Web page on the Powerwall at URL “http:///www-mount.ee.u mn.edu/-okeefe’’. Software Developed [11 PowerWaZZ Control Software. NASA support helped further the development of the control software for our parallel display system known as the Powerwall. This scalable display allows high-resolution supercomputer simulations to be shown in their totality to both small and large audiences. The disk array systems constructed partly with NASA support provided the more than 300 MegaBytes per second data throughput required by the Powerwall. First constructed at Supercomputing ‘94, we have constructed a PowerWall with NSF support in our own laboratory. [2] UNIX kernel trace and fragmentation measurement routines. These routines provide a means of measuring OS kernel performance and the effects of file fragmentation. Available on the Web at URL address: “http:www-mount.ee.umn.e dd-soltis ”. Papers Published [ 13 Thomas M. Ruwart and Matthew T. O’Keefe, “Performance Characteristics of a 100 MegaByte/Second Disk Array,” Storage and Znte$aces ‘94, Santa Clara, CA, January 1994. [2] Aaron C. Sawdey, Matthew T. O’Keefe, Rainer Bleck, and Robert W. Numrich, ‘me Design, Implementation, and Performance of a Parallel Ocean Circulation Model,” Proceedings of the Sixth ECMWF Workshop on the Use of Parallel Processors in Meteorology, Reading, England, November 1994. Proceedings published by World . Scientzjlc Publishers (Singapore) in Coming of Age, edited by G-R. Hoffman and N Kreitz, 1995. [3] Paul R. Woodward, “Interactive Scientific Visualization of Fluid Flow,” IEEE Computer, Oct. 1993, vol. 26, no. 10, pp. 13-26. [4] Thomas M. Ruwart and Matthew T. O’Keefe, “A 500 MegaByte/Second Disk Array,” Proceedings of the Fourth NASA Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, pp. 75-90, Greenbelt, MD, March 1995. [SI Aaron Sawdey, Derek Lee, Thomas Ruwart, Paul Woodward and Matthew O’Keefe, and Rainer Bleck, ‘‘Interactive Smooth-Motion Animation of High Resolution Ocean Circulation Calculations,“ OCEANS ‘95 MTSHEEE Conference, San Diego, October 1995. [6] Steve Soltis, Matthew O’Keefe, Thomas Ruwart and Ben Gribstad, “The Global File System (GFS),” to appear in the Fzfth NASA Goddurd Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, September 1996. [7] Steven R. Soltis, Matthew T. O’Keefe and Thomas M. Ruwart, “Instrumenting a UNIX Kernel for Event Tracing,” submitted to Sofhyare: Practice and Experience, 1995, under revision.. [S] Aaron C. Sawdey and Matthew T. O’Keefe, “A Software-level Cray T3D Emulation Package for SGI Shared-memory Multiprocessor Systems,” submitted to Software: Practice and Experience, June 1995, under revision. Technical Reports 111 Aaron C. Sawdey, “Using the Parallel IWCOM Code on the SGI Challengc Multiprocessor and the Cray T3D,” technical report, University of Minnesota, available on the WWW at http://www-mount.ee.umn.edu/-sawdey. G@~irmmRtG SE EquJpmi@m@G @mffigura@J@m Laboratory for Computational Science and Engineering University of Minnesota 8 feet wide, 6 feet high workstations 216 GB total space OC3 ATM Connection to (CISE) U of MN Telecom C3 A TM Connection to Computer Science 30GB Disk array .( -- I 36 Seagate Baracuda 9 Fibre Channel Disks T.M. Ruwan 2Apri196 313 GB total space rmr@ Icse. umne du (Seagate Advanced Storage Project) hrtp:/hww. Icse.u mn.e du Current LZSE Equipment Configuration inciuding the PowerVall

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.