Download - Jan Blommaart, IBM Netherlands. June 2006
© 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……?