© 2006 IBM Corporation

Jan Blommaart, IBM Netherlands.

June 2006

The LOFAR Experience and its relevance to future

radio astronomy projects Next Generation Correlators for Radio Astronomy and Geodesy

© 2006 IBM Corporation2

IBM BlueGene/L inGroningen for LOFAR

LOFAR network

© 2006 IBM Corporation3

ASTRON and IBM have developed a partnership that started with the LOFAR project

We have delivered the BlueGene platform for correlator functions and filters.

We have started a lot of discussions and we have developed ideas on other projects like SKADS, SKA, JIVE…..

Radio astronomy is still relative new to IBM: we need your extreme requirements to push the limits

© 2006 IBM Corporation4

It all started in May 2002

May 2002, first contacts between ASTRON and IBM 2002/2003, in depth meetings every 2 months, focus on application and requirements September 2003, workshop at IBM Research, discuss BlueGene as a potential solution November 2003, Dutch government agrees on grant for LOFAR (BSIK) February 2004, agreement between ASTRON and IBM (SIGN) April 2005, inauguration of LOFAR BlueGene/L system (STELLA) June 2006, all specs achieved(?), still need final proof from ASTRON/LOFAR test group 2007/2008, LOFAR / BlueGene, EoR and …. ?

2003 2004 20052002 2006

startLast (?) techn.

I/O problem solved

IBM Research Req. Analysis

BSIK

Conclusion: We learned that these projects take time…..(and you already knew)

SIGN

STELLA

Application development and testing

© 2006 IBM Corporation5

IBM High Performance Computing

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Supercomputer Peak SpeedSupercomputer Peak Speed

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010Year Introduced

1E+2

1E+4

1E+6

1E+8

1E+10

1E+12

1E+14

1E+16

Peak

Spe

ed (f

lops

)

Doubling time = 1.5 yr.

ENIAC (vacuum tubes)UNIVAC

IBM 701 IBM 704IBM 7090 (transistors)

IBM Stretch

CDC 6600 (ICs)CDC 7600

CDC STAR-100 (vectors)CRAY-1

Cyber 205 X-MP2 (parallel vectors)

CRAY-2X-MP4

Y-MP8i860 (MPPs)

ASCI White

Blue Gene / PBlue Gene / L

Blue Pacific

DeltaCM-5 Paragon

NWTASCI Red

ASCI Red

CP-PACS

NEC Earth Simulator

Bipolar to CMOStransition

100 Pflops for low-bit operations? SKA

Lowpowerdesign

© 2006 IBM Corporation6

1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007Year

0.001

0.01

0.1

1

GFL

OPS

/Wat

t

QCDSPColumbia

QCDOCColumbia/IBM

Blue Gene/L

ASCI WhitePower 3

Earth Simulator

ASCI Q

NCSA, Xeon LLNL, Itanium 2

ECMWF, p690Power 4+

NASA, SGI

SX-8

NASA, SGI Cray XT3

Fujitsu Bioserver

IBM E&TS, IBM Research

Supercomputer Power EfficienciesFocus on aggregate performance by using more chips with much less power for each

Focus on single thread performance and peakspeed, not power consumption

© 2006 IBM Corporation7

There is an energy crisis now!

© 2006 IBM Corporation8

The overall cost per performance must be an important factor for very large radio astronomy systems

© 2006 IBM Corporation9

The overall increase of performance depends on many factors, that need to be discussed all

© 2006 IBM Corporation10

The access to memory is a major constraint, it will get worse!

© 2006 IBM Corporation11

The access to memory is a major constraint, it will get worse (cont’d)!

© 2006 IBM Corporation12

Radio Astronomy will need to use parallel processing to the xtreme, Moore’s law alone will not help!.

0,lim NN

Here is why?

So prepare and start now!

© 2006 IBM Corporation13

So what did we learn:

Focus on requirements first:– Functional (application level)

• Ops rate, Flops rate, External I/O, Internal I/O– Non-functional.

• Power consumption, Power dissipation, Power density, Availability, , Maintenance,Software environment

Then discuss potential platforms/solutions

What might be done even better:– Simulations, cannot start early enough– Do not underestimate the size of the I/O problem…– Test, test, test, test

© 2006 IBM Corporation14

IBM would like to extend the partnership that started with the LOFAR project….

We have delivered the BlueGene platform for correlator functions and filters.

We have started a lot of discussions and we have developed ideas on other projects like SKADS, SKA, JIVE…..

Radio astronomy is still relative new to IBM: we need your extreme requirements to push the limits

Next generation correlator……?