Report on Communication Architecture for Clusters (CAC) Workshop Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda Department of Computer and Info. Science The Ohio State University

Objectives Clusters are being targeted for high-end computing as well as high- performance servers Requires –High-performance communication and I/O subsystems –Low overhead programming environment support –Support for QoS for emerging applications –Study of the impact of emerging networking technologies and standards (VIA, InfiniBand) Goals: Bring together researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, research labs and national labs to discuss solutions as well as future trends for designing scalable, high-performance, and cost-effective communication and I/O architectures for clusters

Organization Started in 2001 Takes place in conjunction with Int’l Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS) –CAC ’01 (IPDPS ’01) in San Francisco, April 2001 –CAC ’02 (IPDPS ’02) in Ft. Lauderdale, April 2002 –CAC ’03 (IPDPS ’03) in Nice, France, April 2003 Co-organized by –D. K. Panda (OSU) –Jose Duato (Univ. of Valencia, Spain) –Craig Stunkel (IBM TJ Watson)

Organization Follow-up to the Communication and Architectural Support for Network-Based Parallel Computing (CANPC) Workshops, held in conjunction with HPCA conference from Focuses on interaction between presenters and audience Thanks to many people in this room –PC members –Keynote Speakers –Authors –Session Chairs –Panel Moderators –Panelists Please do not blame me if your paper was not accepted –We (organizers) simply followed the recommendations by PC members

CAC ‘01 14 papers out of 24 Grouped along four sessions –Low-level Messaging –Interconnection and Communication –Switch/Router and NIC Support –Network Services and Communication Keynote Talk by Prof. Thomas Sterling Commodity Clusters: The Third Wave for High Performance Computing –Focused on multiple issues related to cluster computing –Emphasized on next generation cluster computing in space (using computers in satellites)

CAC ’01 (Cont’d) Panel Session InfiniBand: The de-facto standard for system and local area networks or just a scalable replacement for PCI Buses? –Moderator: Timothy Pinkston (USC) –Panelists: Jose Duato (Univ. of Valencia, Spain) Michael Krause (HP) Irving Robinson (Intel) Thomas Sterling (Caltech and JPL) Madhu Talluri (Sun) Alan Benner (IBM) Six papers and a copy of the panel report (after going through another round of review process) have been selected to appear in a special issue of Cluster Computing journal, April 2003 Was attended by around people

CAC ’02 11 papers out of 19 (less submissions due to 9/11) Grouped along four sessions –Routing and Switching –Remote Memory Communication –I/O and NIC Support –InfiniBand Keynote Talk by Prof. Tony Skjellum Explicit Parallel Programming with Message Passing Interfaces: Legacy, Longevity, Optimizability, Evolvability –Focused on multiple issues related to past and current development of MPI –Emphasized on multiple aspects of optimizing MPI implementations

CAC ’02 (Cont’d) Panel Session Cluster Interconnects Crystal Ball: Which will win in 2006? –Moderator: Craig Stunkel (IBM TJ Watson) –Panelists: David Addision (Quadrics) Kevin Dierling (Mellanox) Patrick Geoffray (Myricom) Shubu Mukherjee (Intel) Renato J. Recio (IBM) Was also attended by around people

CAC ’03 13 papers out of 37 Grouped along five sessions –Communications Hardware –Network Interfaces and Collective Communication –Communication Libraries –System Services –Performance Evaluation Keynote Talk by Prof. Dan Reed Clusters: Challenges and Opportunities Panel session Top 3 technologies that are limiting cluster interconnects –Moderator: Ron Brightwell (Sandia) –Panelists: being decided

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