Parallel Processing

This paper provides an introduction to the transition planning steps that are required before converting an IBM Parallel System Support Program (PSSP) cluster into a Cluster System Management (CSM) cluster. It provides information about the tools, documentation, and other resources available to help you plan before transitioning your cluster system from a PSSP-managed environment to a CSM-managed environment. It also examines the different paths you can take to make this transition and illustrates these different paths with step-by-step transition procedures. tech news

Performance evaluation of parallel applications on an HPC machine is complicated. To model the single processor performance of an application, the following are measured: bandwidth and latency of data storing and loading into the memory hierarchy (main memory, caches), and the performance of total floating points and memory operations. Communication performance is evaluated by measuring the communication bandwidth and latency on and of nodes, and the percentage of communication required to distribute and gather data in a parallel application. This paper describes the performance measurements of our SMP POWER4 machines p690 and p655 using the PMaC benchmark suite. tech news

As an academic foundation formed to strengthen bioinformatics research and development in Switzerland, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) needed more computing capability to support leading-edge life science research and development. SIB also wanted to accelerate the availability of open-source life science applications and explore opportunities to develop commercial versions of some of its technologies. SIB formed an innovative alliance with Swiss academic partners, Intel and HP, resulting in the Vital-IT Center in Lausanne. With a 64-CPU HP server cluster powered by Intel Itanium 2 processors, the center provides state-of-the-art infrastructure for a distributed community of academic partners. SIB, HP and Intel are collaborating to port key bioinformatics applications and optimise them for the Itanium 2 microarchitecture. tech news

This white paper will explore the roadmap from the perspective of iSeries application developers and technical managers. It will consider the business and technical conditions that make each stage of the roadmap practical or that preclude implementation of a particular roadmap stage. It will also examine the extent to which the roadmap is a reasonable direction for iSeries development, the benefits of implementing the roadmap, and the investments that are required to realize those benefits. tech news

A wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, Frankfurt, Germany-based T-Systems is one of Europe's leading IT service providers. T-Systems views grid computing as a cornerstone of future infrastructure concepts that can fundamentally help to change the ways in which companies approach their IT needs. Looking to offer grid solutions as part of its Virtual Data Center--a portfolio of utility-like services--T-Systems decided to show potential customers how grid technology enables companies to meet the typical needs of the commercial data center. Such needs include satisfying service level agreements and help to ensure scalability, high performance and high availability for applications. To help establish the concept of grid computing in commercial environments, T-Systems leveraged its longstanding relationship with IBM, a world leader in grid technology, to form an innovative cooperation to develop and demonstrate base grid technologies. tech news