Cray Introduces Adaptive Supercomputing

David Greene writes "HPCWire has a story about Cray's newly-introduced vision of Adaptive Supercomputing. The new system will combine multiple processor architectures to broaden applicability of HPC systems and reduce the complexity of HPC application development. Cray CTO Steve Scott says, 'The Cray motto is: adapt the system to the application - not the application to the system.'"

Good Motto

Cray CTO Steve Scott says, 'The Cray motto is: adapt the system to the application - not the application to the system.'

That's a good motto, but how often do you bend the will of your application, needs or business to the limitations of the application? I've been sitting on something for a couple weeks after telling someone "You really should have accepted the information the other way, because this new way you want it is highly problematic (meaning: rather than rip it off with a simple SQL query, I'll have to do an app)"

IMHO adapting to the needs of the user == customisationg, which also == money. Maybe it's not a bad idea at that! :-)

In certain cases, at run-time, the system will determine the most appropriate processor for running a piece of code, and direct the execution accordingly.

This assumes, of course, that you have X number of processors to chose from. If you can't do it, the answer is still 'throw more money at it, buy more hardware.'

my head is still spinning from all the new buzzwords overheard at SD West 2006.

Co-processors anyone?

After exhaustive analysis Cray Inc. concluded that, although multi-core commodity processors will deliver some improvement, exploiting parallelism through a variety of processor technologies using scalar, vector, multithreading and hardware accelerators (e.g., FPGAs or ClearSpeed co-processors) creates the greatest opportunity for application acceleration.

So they're saying that instead of faster/more generalized processors, they want several specialized processors.

Old ideas are new again.

Re:Co-processors anyone?

There are actually processors out there with compilers which can compile a few bottleneck C/C++ functions into hardware on an integrated FPGA. This expands the CPU instruction set in application-specific ways and can, in some cases, give absolutely enormous speedups.

In other words, they're working on processors which are programmed in general-purpose languages, but which adapt their hardware to the specific program.

Re:Good Motto

It is possible to build comptuers that are optimized for certain kinds of calculations.

For example, Gerald Sussman of MIT (a computer scientist) and a Jack Wisdom (a physicist) decided they wanted to do long-term modelling of the solar system's evolution over time. Long time modelling of a multi-body system requires a fantastic amount of calculation. What is the best way to do it?

Sussman and Wisdom came up with a crafty idea: build a computer that is specially configured at the hardware level to do the modelling. Sussman and his colleagues decided that with off-the-shelf parts they could build a computer that would be just as or more capable of modeling this system than a supercomputer would be. The result was the Digital Orrery, a relativlely cheap computer that gave great results. (It is now featured in the Smithsonian museum.)

Think of it: if your computer is going to be doing the Fast Fourier Transform 6.02x10^23 times per day, why not build a superfast chip that does nothing but the FFT rather than express it as software? It's a pretty cool idea. I think this is the sort of thing that Cray computers claims to want to do with its motto.

Re:Adaptive = Adapting for Survive

Cray already makes systems based on many thousands of opteron processors. You can't beat them for scalar processing power. But what they also make,and still excel at, is specialized vector machines that can work with them. It's two good, but different tools for different jobs. The improvement is to make the two even more integrated and more flexible.

Cray?

I didn't even know Cray still existed. Maybe it was Sony's "emotion engine" [wikipedia.org] that almost killed them. ;)

Coolest Looking Supercomputers

Cray always made the coolest looking supercomputers. Here's an interesting bit of trivia:

The Cray T3D MC cabinet had an Apple Macintosh PowerBook laptop built into its front. Its only purpose was to display animated Cray Research and T3D logos on its color LCD screen.

Go AMD

"All of these platforms will use AMD Opterons for their scalar processor base.'

Im just loving the vendors picking up on AMD.

Their idea seems very interesting in theory. It sounds like HPC's version of the math co-processor->crypto accelerator idea.

And at least they are not basing the userland on Unicos :)

Complexity, current machines

It seems like the idea of combining multiple architectures into a single machine is already being done -- we have fast general purpose CPUs (single and dual core x86 offerings from AMD and Intel), paired with very fast streaming vector chips on video cards, which can be used for other non-graphical operations like a coprocessor.

The only difference I see is that they're relying on an intelligent compiler to decide which bits to send to which processing unit, but I'm not sure how much faith can be placed there. Cray certainly has a lot of supercomputing experience, but relying on compiler improvements to make or break an architecture doesn't have a good track record. I'm curious to see how they fare.

Re:Complexity, current machines

They really aren't rellying on compiler improvements, so much as passing the code through their vectorizing compiler, and a tool for generating their fpga codes. If the code optimization for these 2 steps fails to optimize very much, you bail out and send it to the general purpose (opteron) processors.

Your being fairly pedantic about the computer architecture anyway. Yes, pairing multipe processor types together is not new, but most mpp supercomputers use identical node types.

The jist of this story is simpler than it sounds. Cray has 4 product lines with 4 cpu types, 4 interconnect routers, 4 cabinet types, and 4 operating systems. They would like to condense this down. The first step is to reuse components from one machine to the next. There are distinct advantages for keeping the 4 cpu types for various problem sets, but most everything else could be multi-purpose. From the sounds of things, it's using the next generation of the seastar router in all of the machines. Thus you use the same router chips, cabling, backplane, and frame for all the products. This reduces the number of unique components cray has to worry about. If they go to DDR2 memory on the X1 and mta, that further simplifies things, though I suspect they won't.

Well, once you share parts, why not make a frame with a bunch of general purpose CPUs for unoptimized codes, and a few fpga or vector cpus for the highly optimized codes? It allows customers more flexibility, and introduces cray's mid-range customers to the possibility of using the really high-end vector processors currently reserved for the high-end X1 systems. It's also a win for the current high-end customers. On the current X1 systems, you have these very elaborate processors running the user's optimized application, but the vector cpu's also end up running scalar codes like utilities and the operating system. These are tasks the vector cpu's aren't terribly good at, and you're using a $40,000 processor to run tasks a $1000 opteron will do better. Even if the customer isn't interested in mix-n-match codes on the system, (which I'm skeptical any cray customer really is), you probably want to throw a few dozen opteron nodes into the X1's successor, just to handle the OS, filesystems, networking, and the batch scheduler.

Supercomputing v Distributed Computing

It seems the bulk of the article is bemoaning how ineffecient single processor systems are, offering Cray's planned adaptive model as a solution, but surely we've already seen the way forward in regard to supercomputing, and that is distributed single (or dual) processor machines. As stated at zakon.org [zakon.org], "SETI@Home launches on 17 May (2001) and within four weeks its distributed Internet clients provide more computing power than the most powerful supercomputer of its time"
Surely the computing environment hasn't changed so dramatically in 5 years as to make this type of achievement redundant?

Unless 'computing power' is different to 'combined processor speed', I don't understand what Cray are up to here.. perhaps someone can enlighten me?

I'll pre-order the next version

so that I can play Duke Nukem Forever on it.

This begs the question...

So if I want to run Mine Sweeper, Cray will adapt one of their supercomputers to the requirements of this game? Sweet!

Good Linux Journal Article On This

LJ had a good article on this a few months back.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8368/print [linuxjournal.com]

Cray's Motto...

I had thought that since 1999, Cray's motto was, "Working like everyday is our last........because it just could be!"

Oh well. Whatever works.

Cray as a company in general

Cray as a company in general is amazing, they have been around forever and they dont sell bulk crap computers, go figure... The inspiration behind Cray is definitly worth a good study for future computer industry companies.

Re:Cray as a company in general

The story is interesting, but also full of almost going under, being bought, sold, parent companies going bankrupt and what not..

The Cray we know now shares a name with the Cray that produced the famous Cray supercomputers of old, they also have some nice technology around, but there the similarities stop.

building machines around problems

Cray finally figured it out. I have been saying for years:

HPC/Beowulf clusters are about building machines around problems

That is why Clusters are such a powerful paradigm. If your problem needs more processors/memory/bandwidth/data access, you can design a cluster to fit your problem and only buy what your need. In the past you had to buy a large supercomputer with lots of engineering you did not need. Designing clusters is an art, but the payoff is very good price-to-performance. I even wrote an article on Cluster Urban Legends [clustermonkey.net] the explains many of these issues.

And What If...

The new system will combine multiple processor architectures

And what if I don't want multiple processor architectures, but instead just lots and lots of the single architecture my code is compiled for?

Re:And What If...

The idea is that all the CPU types will be blades that all use the same router, and plug into a common backplane, and that the cabinets all cable together the same way. In all cases, I imagine there will be opterons around the periphery, as I/O nodes and running the operating system. Then you plug in compute nodes in the middle, where the computer nodes can be a bunch more opterons, or vector cpu's, or fpga's, or multithreaded cpus. There will certaintly be plenty of customers only interested in lotsa opterons on cray's fast interconnect, and they just won't buy any of the custom cpus.

Build to the application?

Cray CTO Steve Scott says, 'The Cray motto is: adapt the system to the application - not the application to the system.'

That seems like a good idea, but you end up with a "one trick pony" that does only one thing really well. Once that application is end-of-life or no longer needed, your million dollar machine is worthless piece of lounge furniture unless it can be reconfigured for some other application.

To me, it doesn't seem like a good investment. Then again, that's probably why I'm not building super computers!

Has to be said

Wow! I'd sure like to have a Beowulf Cluster of...uhm...wait a minute.

Buzz word.

While I must admit "Adaptive Supercomputing" sound like a realy cool buzz word, in practice the programmer still will need to adapt the application to the physical distribution of the systems. Or are they going to dynamicly rewire the switches?

There have been several attempts (hpfortran, orca, etc..) to automate parallisme but most of them failed because a skilled programmer could create a much faster application within a few days. And remeber that a 10% performance boost in these applications means thousands of dollars saved.

So I suspect this is just a buzz word.

Old Story

SGI Announced their version "Multi-Paradigm Computing" in July 2004. Cray is 2 years behind the game.
http://www.sgi.com/features/2004/july/project_ultr [sgi.com] aviolet/ [sgi.com]

I for one...

...welcome our new adaptive supercomputer overlords.

Sounds like SGI, sadly

Cray and SGI have both been losing money recently as more users flock to clusters, which tend to be cheaper and more flexible. Now both of them are offering this "adaptability" position. SGI is moving in the direction of blades so customers can choose their level of computing power; Cray will soon have a core machine that customers can build out from. What's interesting to note is that both of them are ultimately selling Linux on commodity processors (Itanium for SGI and Opteron for Cray) plus a proprietary network and a few other bells and whistles. It seems unlikely they'll be able to compete LinuxNetworx or even *gasp* IBM.

What's next for Cray? The Cray Future!

Design the Cray to first read & analyze the software to be run + it's hardware requirements, then load it into a ROM chip specific to the Cray operation.