JUNE 18–22, 2017
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY

Session Details

 
Name: Interconnects for HPC Systems
 
Time: Wednesday, June 21, 2017
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
 
Room:   Panorama 1
Messe Frankfurt
 
Breaks:12:30 pm - 01:45 pm Lunch
 
Chair:   Sarah Neuwirth, University of Heidelberg
 
Abstract:   The internal interconnect of a HPC System is an integral and essential part of the architecture. Key characteristics like topology, bandwidth and latency have a dramatic impact on the actual performance that a system delivers for specific applications. Talks in this session will begin with a review of available interconnects in day-to-day use in a major HPC center. As it is well understood that current interconnect technologies are not applicable for exascale architectures the next talk will address options, challenges and the current status of interconnects that rely far more on photons than on electrons. It will be shown that the transition from electrons to photons has to occur right at the processor level for this kind of architectures. The final talk will address the status and potential of a future interconnect protocol standard called Gen-Z that is supported by several vendors all active in HPC. Gen-Z would actually allow more memory centric computing and foster highly efficient and heterogeneous application centric system architectures.
The three talks will be followed by a general Q&A session in form of a small panel. The audience then will have the opportunity to discuss directly with the session speakers.
 
 
Presentations: Existing De-Facto Standards for Interconnects: InfiniBand, GigE & OmniPath
11:00 am - 11:25 am
  Jens Domke, Tokyo Institute of Technology
  Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zurich
 
Optical Interconnects for Exascale - Challenges & Opportunities
11:25 am - 11:50 am
  Sébastien Rumley, Columbia University
 
Gen-Z, a Future Standard for Interconnects?
11:50 am - 12:15 pm
  John Bent, Seagate Government Solutions
  Paolo Faraboschi, HPE
 
Panel
12:15 pm - 12:30 pm
  Jens Domke, Tokyo Institute of Technology
  Paolo Faraboschi, HPE
  Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zurich
  Sébastien Rumley, Columbia University