exploiting market realities to address national security’s high-performance computing needs

IDA Defense Science Study Group 11/99 Mark D. Hill, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Exploiting Market Realities toAddress National Security’s

High-Performance Computing Needs

Mark D. Hill

Computer Sciences Department

University of Wisconsin--Madison

(Modified 01/00 for IDA-Bowie)


Bottom Line

• Recommendations– Avoid directed procurement– Exploit clusters– Provide sustained funding to academia– Build the high-performance computing (HPC) market

• Talk Outline– HPC is important to national security– History: PVPs and MPPs– Future: Clusters– Four Recommendations– Summary


HPC is Important to National Security

• HPC is the upper extreme of computing– Supercomputers, etc. , costing $10M-$100M

• HPC delivers for some important problems– Breaking encoded messages (NSA) – Nuclear stockpile stewardship (e.g., LANL)

(without nuclear testing)

• Requirements– Trillions of operations per second (tera ops)– Trillions of characters of semiconductor memory (terabytes)– 1015 characters on disks & tapes (petabytes)


History: Parallel Vector Processors (PVPs)

• E.g., 1980s supercomputers from Cray Research– custom processors

(i.e., no microprocessor)

• Assessment– Were ideal for NSA and LANL in 1980s– Sales hurt for “killer micros”– E.g., Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) buys Cray in 1995

Cray-1


History: Massively Parallel Processors (MPPs)

• E.g., Cray T3D, Intel Paragon, & Thinking Machines CM-5 in early 1990s– Replicated identical hardware

(especially microprocessors)– But specialized software– Integrated computer vendor

• Assessment– High-end HPC market stalls

(see next slide)– Big companies lose interest in HPC– Small companies go out of business

TMC CM-5


HPC Market in Billions US$ [IDC99]

•

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

1993 1998

< 1M ASP

>= 1M ASP


Future: Clusters

• Clusters of “Nodes”– Nodes: PCs to commercial servers– Networks: connect nodes with standard network to custom

“system area network”– Cluster software: optional software that makes cluster

appear more like an MPP– Clusters are a big part of DOE’s Advanced Strategic

Computing Initiative (ASCI)


Future: Clusters, continued

• Nodes– Commercially viable

• PC or server nodes? (You get what you pay for)

– Available from multiple vendors– Insures sustained availability

• Network– Commodity LAN?– Specialized SAN?– You get what you pay for– Need to port to new LAN/SAN every few years

• Use middleware to rise above the details (e.g., MPI)


Future: Clusters, continued

• Software– Need to port to new cluster every few years– Think about the performance lost from software not working

in the first 1.5 years of a cluster’s 3-year life• Use shrink-wrapped software whenever possible

• Use standard languages & libraries

• For custom software: K.I.S.S.

• Integration -- Creating a “Computer System”– Hardest problem (done by MPP computer vendor)– Select & deploy network hardware, network protocols,

middleware, application library, debuggers, etc.– Who does integration? Customer? 3rd party?


Recommendation 1: Forget “Procurement”

• Can’t buy HPC like bombers or carriers

– Computer technology moves too fast for contractor mentality (two times the performance in two years)

• Time lags too long

• Specifications too detailed

– Can’t depend on sustained government commitment(post cold war)

– Can’t depend on one company (or a few)• large - “zero billion dollar market”

• small - out of business


Recommendation 2: Exploit Clusters

• Government should buy Clusters

– Customer (e.g., NSA or LANL)• Is responsible for mission

• Should be responsible for cluster integration

– But• Sub-contracting integration?

• Avoiding duplication of effort?

– Many technical problems• Clusters are like Churchill view of democracy

• “Democracy is the worst form of governmentexcept all the others that have been tried.”


Recommendaton 3: Fund Academia

• (Warning: I have a bias here)

• Sustained funding of academia to develop new HPC ideas (as we have done in the past)

– Not just Kuhnian paradigm shifts (DARPA)

– Not just “trickle down” (DOE ASCI)

– The country reaps what it sows


Recommendation 4: Build HPC Market

• Government should encourage private HPC customers to reduce mismatch between needs of government and private sector

– Demonstration projects

– Personnel exchanges

– High risk but high payoff

– Unbounded potential in Biology


Bottom Line

• Recommendations– Avoid directed procurement– Exploit clusters– Provide sustained funding to academia– Build the high-performance computing (HPC) market– 10 issues in white paper

• Acknowledgements– DSSG: Gould, Licato, Major, Roberts, colleagues, & mentors– IDA or CCS: Brenner, Carlson, Draper, Feustal, Greenberg, & Mayfield– LANL: Cerutti, Lee, Luo, McCoy, Thompson, Reynders, Wasseman,

Watson, & White– NSA: Powers / DARPA: DSSG sponsorship & Hendler– NSF, Compaq, IBM, Intel, & Sun: my Wisconsin research sponsorship


Complete Recommendations (1 of 2)

• Don’t direct one or a few computer vendors to build PVPs or MPPs (like bombers or carriers)

• Do provide money for government to buy HPC machines (like ASCI but it’s not sufficient)

• Encourage HPC customers to take responsibility for cluster integration

• Appealing to industry patriotism will not work

• Provide some money to computing vendors to build better HPC machines


Complete Recommendations (2 of 2)

• Expose industry to HPC potential (pilot projects & personnel exchanges; consider biology)

• Expose academia to HPC potential (pilot projects & personnel exchanges; consider biology)

• Provide sustained HPC funding to academia

• Provide HPC benchmarks to academia

• Provide some money to academia to buy HPC machines to build better HPC machines

exploiting market realities to address national security’s high-performance computing needs

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