D8.4: Final Report on Petascale Systems and Centre Assessment

The PRACE-1IP Work Package 8 (WP8), “Support for the procurement and Commissioning of HPC service”, has three objectives:

• Assessment of petascale systems to be considered as PRACE production systems (task 1);
• Design and operation of reliable and power efficient high performance computing (HPC) computer centres (task 2);
• Sharing of best practices for the procurement and installation of HPC systems (task 3);

This Work Package builds on and expands the important work started in the PRACE Preparatory Phase project (PRACE-PP, January 2008 – June 2010), which sought to reach informed decisions within PRACE as a whole on the acquisition and hosting of HPC systems.
WP8 provides input for defining and updating the procurement plan and strategy and fosters the sharing of best practices for procuring and installing production systems. This deliverable(D8.4–Final Report on Petascale Systems and Centre Assessment) formalizes such input by summarizing the work achieved during WP8 (July 2010 – June 2012 period).
Task 1 - Assessment of petascale systems - has performed a continuous market watch and analysis of trends. The analysis also encompasses comparisons and graphs that allow an easier and quicker examination of trends for different aspects of top-level HPC systems. Work has also been carried out to automate and facilitate the gathering of information for the market watch. Web tools have been created for this, allowing anybody involved in PRACE to quickly search through the useful sources that were identified.
Hardware-software correlation has been explored by means of programming models, benchmarks and applications (using performance models), to assess the suitability of architectures for real-world applications, which is of key importance in assessing the real value of systems. This work is being carried out in collaboration with WP7 - Enabling
Petascale Applications: Efficient Use of Tier-0 Systems”.
Task 2 - Design and operation of reliable and power efficient HPC computer centres - has produced a series of white papers, each of which explores a specific topic related to HPC data centre design and operation. Dedicated surveys were circulated among PRACE sites to collect as much information as possible from the people involved in facility construction and maintenance, as well as managers. The results are analysed and assembled into a stand-alone document for each topic, for use as reference by PRACE partners.
A brief description of the “European Workshop on HPC Centre Infrastructures” series, which were hosted by CSCS, CEA then LRZ, is also included in the document.
Task 3 - Best practices for the procurement and installation of HPC systems - has proceeded with their plans to capture information and experience from PRACE partners, based on a synthetic questionnaire. The survey has been sent to many PRACE sites with recent procurements (a mix of Tier-1 and Tier-0 ) and their responses have been received, compiled, and analysed. Some introductory information has also been gathered about pre-commercial
procurements in the field of HPC, a topic that will be of interest for the PRACE-3IP project. A white paper on HPC systems procurement has been produced from Task 3 material and findings.