SC18 History Makers – Marking SC’s 30th Anniversary – Part 2
A second in a series! The following are exhibitor partner organizations responding to “How did your organization make supercomputing history?” survey as compiled by the 30th Anniversary team. Thanks to all our exhibitors for their participation/collaboration over the past three decades and special thanks to those who filled out the survey.
Name of Individual or Organization: Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC)
Type of organization: Academic
Number of years exhibited at SC? 29
Description of the contribution:
1985 Cornell University selected as one of the first 4 supercomputer centers sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Cornell’s NSF supercomputing center was established by Nobel Laureate Kenneth Wilson who inspired the scientific community with the notion that computation is equal with theory and experiment in scientific inquiry.
Wilson was among the first to use the term Grand Challenge Problems to describe fundamental problems in science and engineering that have broad economic and/or scientific impact and whose solution can be advanced by applying high performance computing techniques and resources (R. Tapia et al.). Wilson and others also coined the term computational science to refer to the search for new discoveries using computation as the main method.
This idea was so powerful that it led to the U.S. Congress passing into law the High Performance Computing and Communication Initiative to stimulate scientific innovations through high-performance computation (P. Denning). Image: Rhodes Hall, home of Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing
Name of Individual or Organization: OpenMP Architecture Review Board
Company: OpenMP Architecture Review Board
Type of organization: Standards Body
Number of years exhibited at SC? 15
Description of the contribution:
The OpenMP API was launched in 1997 and has remained a strong presence in the industry. The OpenMP Architecture Review Board established and evolved the shared-memory programming model of choice for on-node multi-threading to complement the Message Passing Interface.
Name of Individual or Organization: RIKEN Center for Computational Science
Type of organization: Academic; National Lab
Description of the contribution:
RIKEN, in collaboration with Fujitsu, developed the K computer, the first machine to break the 10-petaflop barrier in 2011.
Name of Individual or Organization: JAXA: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
Type of organization: National Lab
Number of years exhibited at SC? 24
Description of the contribution:
Developed world first Parallel Vector supercomputer named “NWT: Numerical Wind Tunnel”.
Name of Individual or Organization: PIONIER – Polish Optical Internet/PSNC – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
Company: PIONIER – Polish Optical Internet/PSNC – Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
Type of organization: Supercomputing and Networking Center
Number of years exhibited at SC? 14
Description of the contribution:
PSNC Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, the operator of PIONIER Polish Optical Internet, just after two years from its foundation in 1993 introduced its supercomputer to TOP500 list for the 1st time: Tulip – SGI Power Challenge XL 486th position on 06/1995 TOP 500 List, 492nd position on 06/1996 TOP 500 List
Name of Individual or Organization: Aggregate.Org/University of Kentucky
Type of organization: Academic
Number of years exhibited at SC? 25
Description of the contribution:
In February 1994, in the Purdue University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor Hank Dietz’s research group (now known as Aggregate.Org and based in the University of Kentucky) built the world’s first Linux PC cluster supercomputer to test their new AGGREGATE FUNCTION COMMUNICATION model and open source hardware that implemented it. It augmented 10Mb/s Ethernet with PAPERS (Purdue’s Adapter for Parallel Execution and Rapid Synchronization) hardware, which communicated between nodes without an OS call, with total latency as low as 3us for operations like barrier synchronization ‰ÛÒ orders of magnitude faster than most conventional supercomputers.
There was even a timesharing gang-scheduled meta-OS called PEN (PAPERS ENvironment). The combined photo here shows the first LInux PC cluster and original PAPERS hardware to the left. However, that cluster was regularly assembled and disassembled to allow courses to use the PCs in that lab as workstations. The image to the right is the first permanent Linux PC cluster, complete with a four-display video wall showing a simple CFD simulation. Each of these first two clusters contained just four 486 PCs.
Name of Individual or Organization: Juelich Supercomputing Centre
Type of organization: National Lab
Number of years exhibited at SC? 20
Description of the contribution:
During SC 2009 the German supercomputer QPACE became No. 1 on the Green500 list. It was developed by an academic consortium of universities and research centres together with several companies including IBM Research and Development Centre in B̦blingen as part of a government-funded research collaboration. The high ranking was achieved by using a very power efficient processor in combination with a new, innovative auto-tuning mechanism for voltages as well as a novel liquid cooling architecture. One 4-rack QPACE system with an aggregate peak performance of more than 100 Tflop/s was running at the Juelich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) for more than 7 years. It was primarily used for Lattice QCD research.
Name of Individual or Organization: Numerical Algorithms Group
Company: Numerical Algorithms Group
Type of organization: Non-for-Profit
Number of years exhibited at SC? 30
Description of the contribution:
The Numerical Algorithms Group NAG holds a rare position as one of the small handful of organizations that has exhibited at every SC since the first one in Orlando in 1988.
Name of Individual or Organization: Kitware, Inc.
Company: Kitware, Inc.
Type of organization: Vendor/Industry
Number of years exhibited at SC? 7
Description of the contribution:
VTK has been providing 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization capabilities under an Open Source license for over 20 years. First created in 1993 and maintained by Kitware, this toolkit has had over 400 contributors, with 108 contributors in the most recent release.
Name of Individual or Organization: Science and Technology Facilities Council
Company: Science and Technology Facilities Council
Type of organization: Academic; National Lab; International Lab
Number of years exhibited at SC? 19
Description of the contribution:
The Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) e-Science Centre was formed in 2001, as part of a UK Government initiative to fund a programme of e-infrastructure development for science. This programme comprised a wide range of resources, people, and e-science centres. The initial programme budget was å£120 million pounds sterling (US$ 157million) over three years. Of this, å£75 million (US$ 98million) was to be spent on grid application pilots, with another å£35 million (US$ 46 million) for developing industrial strength Grid middleware.
From 2004 2007 CCLRC ran the UK National e-Science presence at SC, in collaboration with the National e-Science Centre. We had a 40‰Ûª x 40‰Ûª booth with live demonstrations and presentations from research groups across the UK, attracting over 3,000 visitors during this period. The e-Science programme was the forerunner to developments in what is now the modern cloud. A good example of the journey from grid to cloud is our analysis of experimental data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Since those early days we have gone from strength to strength and, with the merging of the e-Science and Computational Science and Engineering Department and a name change, we are now STFC‰Ûªs Scientific Computing Department (SCD), one of the largest in Europe and located across two UK sites. SCD manages technically advanced high performance computing facilities, services and infrastructure, supporting some of UK’s most advanced scientific facilities. Our staff offer essential expertise, services and products that help the scientific community make vital discoveries and deliver progress.
Name of Individual or Organization: Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Company: Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Type of organization: Academic, National Supercomputing Center
Number of years exhibited at SC? 30
Description of the contribution:
Innovations in Supercomputing Systems PSC: First system to sustain a teraflop: LeMieux, the Terascale Computing System PSC: Bridges PSC-developed architecture pioneered convergence of HPC, AI, and big data. Bridges is designed to support familiar, convenient software and environments for both traditional and non-traditional HPC users.
Name of Individual or Organization: Mississippi State University
Type of organization: Academic
Number of years exhibited at SC? 25
Description of the contribution:
Known for fostering a number of historic contributions in grid generation, high performance computing, and programming, Mississippi State University began its continued involvement in commodity-based, clustered computing in 1987. In that year, DARPA funded an MSU project, called MADEM (Mapped Array Differential Equation Machine), to build its first computing cluster. This 8-node cluster was based on the Sun 4/110 workstation and utilized the native Ethernet connection of each node as the interconnect. By 1992, research activities evolved to support the development of an 8-node cluster based on the Sun SPARCstation 2 workstation, known as the MSPARC/8.
This cluster utilized an interconnect based on network interface cards developed at MSU. This cluster was the first of three clusters to be built at MSU based on the Sun SPARC processor architecture. In June 1993, the first components were purchased for what would be known as the SuperMSPARC. This cluster was initially designed to utilize the Sun SuperSPARC 4-processor modules, but due to production issues with the modules, the MSU research team opted to utilize a HyperSPARC processor modules. Each node of the SuperMSPARC cluster contains four 90 MHz HyperSPARC processors and 288 MB of RAM. The nodes are interconnect via 10 Mb/s Ethernet, 155 Mb/s (OC3) ATM, and Myrinet.
This system also has a custom-built communications midplane with SBUS adapter cards for monitoring interprocess communications. The SuperMSPARC cluster is on display in the Mississippi State University booth (Booth #2443). In December 1999, the fourth generation SPARC-based cluster at MSU was built utilizing Sun UltraSPARC II processors.
Name of Individual or Organization: Charmworks, Inc.
Type of organization: Vendor/Industry
Number of years exhibited at SC? 3
Description of the contribution:
In 1993, the initial version of Charm++ was released. Charm++ is a parallel programming language based on C++ designed by Prof. Laxmikant Kale, and developed in the Parallel Programming Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2014, Charmworks, Inc. began to license and support Charm++ for commercial use. Charm++ is an asynchronous task-based parallel programming model with dynamic runtime support for load balancing and fault tolerance among other features. It has been used to develop and scale scientific applications such as NAMD, OpenAtom, and ChaNGa, among others, up to full petascale systems.
Name of Individual or Organization: Indiana University
Type of organization: Academic
Description of the contribution:
In his 1953 State of the University Address, President Herman B Wells calls for creation of a research computing center because, “many complicated problems in the physical, biological, and social sciences, in business, and in education require the employment of modern high-speed computing machines for practical solution.”
Name of Individual or Organization: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Type of organization: Academic
Number of years exhibited at SC? 11
Description of the contribution:
The new Penguin Computing AccelionTM managed data transfer and access platform sets a data transfer record with a petabyte in a day (2018)
Name of Individual or Organization: NCSA
Type of organization: Academic
Number of years exhibited at SC? 20
Description of the contribution:
Four of the 30 SC General Chairs have a connection to NCSA, three are current NCSA employees! – Bill Kramer (2005) – Scott Lathrop (2011) – Bill Gropp (2013) – Jackie Kern (2015)
Name of Individual or Organization: NetApp
Type of organization: Vendor/Industry
Number of years exhibited at SC? 10
Description of the contribution:
Provided the requirements and design criteria to drive vendors for development of near-line drives in 2003. Seagate provided the first nearline drive in 2005 labelled Tonka near-line. Other vendors followed.