The 2005 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing
September 27-30, 2005
Burlington Marriott, Burlington, MA, USA

Tutorial Title

State of InfiniBand in Designing Next Generation Clusters, File/Storage Systems and Datacenters

Level

The tutorial is intended for various categories of people (such as researchers, engineers, scientists, managers, system developers) working in the areas of high performance interconnect, communication and I/O, storage, networking, middleware, and applications related to next generation high-end systems (such as clusters for high performance computing, cluster-based file systems, storage systems, cluster-based servers (web, database), multi-tier data centers, etc.)

Duration

A half-day

Presenters

Prof. Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda

Department of Computer Science and Engg.

The Ohio State University
Phone: 614-292-5199
Fax: 614-292-2911
Email: panda@cse.ohio-state.edu

Abstract

The emerging InfiniBand Architecture (IBA) is generating a lot of excitement as an open interconnect standard for building next generation high-end systems (as indicated above) in a radical different manner. This tutorial will provide an overview of the IBA standard. The features and performance of IBA will be compared and contrasted with other contemporary interconnects. An overview of IBA products and their capabilities will be presented. Research challenges in designing clusters for high-performance computing (with different programming models such as MPI, DSM, Get/Put), cluster-based file systems, storage systems, cluster-based servers (web and database) and multi-tier data centers will be outlined. Case studies in designing such systems with IBA will be presented.

Tutorial Detailed Description

Part I (50%) 1:00PM-2:30PM

· Introduction

· Overview of IBA and Novel features

· Differences with other interconnect technologies/standards

· Overview of the emerging software interfaces on IBA

Break 2:30-3:00PM

Part II (50%) 3:00PM-4:30PM

· Challenges in designing high-end systems with IBA

o Clusters, MPI-1, and MPI-2

o Cluster-based file and storage systems

o Multi-tier data centers

· Case studies in designing the above systems and sample performance numbers

· Conclusions, Final Q&A, and Discussion

Presenters Bio

Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda is a Professor of Computer Science at the Ohio State University. He obtained his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Southern California. His research interests include parallel computer architecture, high performance computing, user-level communication protocols, interprocessor communication and synchronization, network-based computing, and Quality of Service. He has published over 170 papers in major journals and international conferences related to these research areas. Dr. Panda and his research group members have been doing extensive research on InfiniBand. His research group is currently collaborating with National Laboratories and leading InfiniBand companies on designing various subsystems of next generation High Performance Computing systems with InfiniBand. The MVAPICH (MPI over VAPI for IBA) package developed by his research group (http://nowlab.cis.ohio-state.edu/projects/mpi-iba/) is being used by more than 230 organizations world-wide (in 27 countries) to extract the potential of IBA-based clusters for HPC applications. This software has enabled several clusters to get into the latest TOP500 rankings. His research is supported by funding from US National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, and several industry including Intel, SUN, and Mellanox.