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HPC Applications with Adaptive Runtime Systems

AMS Seminar Series

Speaker: Laxmikant Kale, University of Illinois

Presentation

Seminar Slide Deck (PDF-12MB)

Abstract

Adaptive runtime systems (ARTSs) are expected to be a major tool for efficiently exploiting complex extreme scale machines of near future for sophisticated science and engineering applications. In this talk, I examine what capabilities such ARTS offer, and what the application writers can start doing today to get ready for leveraging this powerful tool. I will discuss why it is essential to re-factor the application software in such a way that certain performance related responsibilities, such as resource management, are handed over to the runtime system. Yet, an adequate amount of control must be left with the application developers. I will discuss ideas necessary for an effective division of labor in this context. I will begin by sketching the capabilities the adaptive runtime systems will offer, drawing examples from the current state of art RTSs, and specifically of Charm++, and extrapolating to the future. I will argue why "over-decomposition" and "migratability" are the minimal set of features that the application developers should start building into their applications now. I will illustrate how these features give adequate control to the application developer while empowering the runtime system. I also define the "principle of persistence" and what application developers should do to enhance persistence and predictability. The ideas will be illustrated with applications developed using Charm++.

Biography

Professor Laxmikant Kale is the director of the Parallel Programming Laboratory and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prof. Kale has been working on various aspects of parallel computing, with a focus on enhancing performance and productivity via adaptive runtime systems, and with the belief that only interdisciplinary research involving multiple CSE and other applications can bring back well-honed abstractions into Computer Science that will have a long-term impact on the state-of-art. His collaborations include the widely used Gordon-Bell award winning (SC'2002) biomolecular simulation program NAMD, and other collaborations on computational cosmology, quantum chemistry, rocket simulation, space-time meshes, and other unstructured mesh applications. He takes pride in his group's success in distributing and supporting software embodying his research ideas, including Charm++, Adaptive MPI and the BigSimframework. He and his team recently won the HPC Challenge award at Supercomputing 2011, for their entry based on Charm++.

L. V. Kale received the B.Tech degree in Electronics Engineering from Benares Hindu University, Varanasi, India in 1977, and a M.E. degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, in 1979. He received a Ph.D. in computer science in from State University of New York, Stony Brook, in 1985.

He worked as a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research from 1979 to 1981. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor in 1985, where he is currently employed as a Professor. Prof. Kale is a fellow of the IEEE, and a winner of the 2012 IEEE Sidney Fernbach award.