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A parallel-vector algorithm for rapid structural analysis on high-performance computers

A fast, accurate Choleski method for the solution of symmetric systems of linear equations is presented. This direct method is based on a variable-band storage scheme and takes advantage of column heights to reduce the number of operations in the Choleski factorization. The method employs parallel computation in the outermost DO-loop and vector computation via the loop unrolling technique in the innermost DO-loop. The method avoids computations with zeros outside the column heights, and as an option, zeros inside the band. The close relationship between Choleski and Gauss elimination methods is examined. The minor changes required to convert the Choleski code to a Gauss code to solve non-positive-definite symmetric systems of equations are identified. The results for two large scale structural analyses performed on supercomputers, demonstrate the accuracy and speed of the method.

Storaasli, Olaf O.

Measurements over distributed high performance computing and storage systems

Requirements are carefully described in descriptions of systems to be acquired but often there is no requirement to provide measurements and performance monitoring to ensure that requirements are met over the long term after acceptance. A set of measurements for various UNIX-based systems will be available at the 1992 Goddard Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies. The authors invite others to contribute to the set of measurements. The framework for presenting the measurements of supercomputers, workstations, file servers, mass storage systems, and the networks that interconnect them are given. Production control and database systems are also included. Though other applications and third party software systems are not addressed, it is important to measure them as well. The capability to integrate measurements from all these components from different vendors, and from the third party software systems was recognized and there are efforts to standardize a framework to do this. The measurement activity falls into the domain of management standards. Standards work is ongoing for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) systems management; AT&T, Digital, and Hewlett-Packard are developing management systems based on this architecture even though it is not finished. Another effort is in the UNIX International Performance Management Working Group. In addition, there are the Open Systems Foundation's Distributed Management Environment and the Object Management Group. A paper comparing the OSI systems management model and the Object Management Group model has been written. The IBM world has had a capability for measurement for various IBM systems since the 1970's and different vendors were able to develop tools for analyzing and viewing these measurements. Since IBM was the only vendor, the user groups were able to lobby IBM for the kinds of measurements needed. In the UNIX world of multiple vendors, a common set of measurements will not be as easy to get.

Williams, Elizabeth

Measurements over distributed high performance computing and storage systems

A strawman proposal is given for a framework for presenting a common set of metrics for supercomputers, workstations, file servers, mass storage systems, and the networks that interconnect them. Production control and database systems are also included. Though other applications and third part software systems are not addressed, it is important to measure them as well.

Williams, Elizabeth

Supercomputing '91; Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference on High Performance Computing, Albuquerque, NM, Nov. 18-22, 1991

Various papers on supercomputing are presented. The general topics addressed include: program analysis/data dependence, memory access, distributed memory code generation, numerical algorithms, supercomputer benchmarks, latency tolerance, parallel programming, applications, processor design, networks, performance tools, mapping and scheduling, characterization affecting performance, parallelism packaging, computing climate change, combinatorial algorithms, hardware and software performance issues, system issues. (No individual items are abstracted in this volume)

Source record

Geometrically nonlinear design sensitivity analysis on parallel-vector high-performance computers

Parallel-vector solution strategies for generation and assembly of element matrices, solution of the resulted system of linear equations, calculations of the unbalanced loads, displacements, stresses, and design sensitivity analysis (DSA) are all incorporated into the Newton Raphson (NR) procedure for nonlinear finite element analysis and DSA. Numerical results are included to show the performance of the proposed method for structural analysis and DSA in a parallel-vector computer environment.

Baddourah, Majdi A.

NASA high performance computing and communications program

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's HPCC program is part of a new Presidential initiative aimed at producing a 1000-fold increase in supercomputing speed and a 100-fold improvement in available communications capability by 1997. As more advanced technologies are developed under the HPCC program, they will be used to solve NASA's 'Grand Challenge' problems, which include improving the design and simulation of advanced aerospace vehicles, allowing people at remote locations to communicate more effectively and share information, increasing scientist's abilities to model the Earth's climate and forecast global environmental trends, and improving the development of advanced spacecraft. NASA's HPCC program is organized into three projects which are unique to the agency's mission: the Computational Aerosciences (CAS) project, the Earth and Space Sciences (ESS) project, and the Remote Exploration and Experimentation (REE) project. An additional project, the Basic Research and Human Resources (BRHR) project exists to promote long term research in computer science and engineering and to increase the pool of trained personnel in a variety of scientific disciplines. This document presents an overview of the objectives and organization of these projects as well as summaries of individual research and development programs within each project.

Holcomb, Lee

Measurement-based performance evaluation technique for high-performance computers

A measurement-based performance evaluation technique has been used to characterize the OS performance of Cedar, a hierarchical shared-memory multiprocessor system. Thirteen OS performance meters were used to capture the operating system activities for compute-bound workloads. Three representative applications from the Perfect Benchmark Suite were used to measure the OS performance in a dedicated system and in multiprogrammed workloads. It was found that 13-23 percent of the total execution time on a dedicated system was spent in executing OS-related activities. Under multiprogramming, 12-14 percent of the total execution time was used by the OS. The impact of multiprogramming on the operating system performance meters was also measured.

Sharma, S.

NASA High Performance Computing and Communications program

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's HPCC program is part of a new Presidential initiative aimed at producing a 1000-fold increase in supercomputing speed and a 1(X)-fold improvement in available communications capability by 1997. As more advanced technologies are developed under the HPCC program, they will be used to solve NASA's 'Grand Challenge' problems, which include improving the design and simulation of advanced aerospace vehicles, allowing people at remote locations to communicate more effectively and share information, increasing scientists' abilities to model the Earth's climate and forecast global environmental trends, and improving the development of advanced spacecraft. NASA's HPCC program is organized into three projects which are unique to the agency's mission: the Computational Aerosciences (CAS) project, the Earth and Space Sciences (ESS) project, and the Remote Exploration and Experimentation (REE) project. An additional project, the Basic Research and Human Resources (BRHR) project, exists to promote long term research in computer science and engineering and to increase the pool of trained personnel in a variety of scientific disciplines. This document presents an overview of the objectives and organization of these projects, as well as summaries of early accomplishments and the significance, status, and plans for individual research and development programs within each project. Areas of emphasis include benchmarking, testbeds, software and simulation methods.

Holcomb, Lee

The Kalman Filter and High Performance Computing at NASA's Data Assimilation Office (DAO)

Atmospheric data assimilation is a method of combining actual observations with model simulations to produce a more accurate description of the earth system than the observations alone provide. The output of data assimilation, sometimes called "the analysis", are accurate regular, gridded datasets of observed and unobserved variables. This is used not only for weather forecasting but is becoming increasingly important for climate research. For example, these datasets may be used to assess retrospectively energy budgets or the effects of trace gases such as ozone. This allows researchers to understand processes driving weather and climate, which have important scientific and policy implications. The primary goal of the NASA's Data Assimilation Office (DAO) is to provide datasets for climate research and to support NASA satellite and aircraft missions. This presentation will: (1) describe ongoing work on the advanced Kalman/Lagrangian filter parallel algorithm for the assimilation of trace gases in the stratosphere; and (2) discuss the Kalman filter in relation to other presentations from the DAO on Four Dimensional Data Assimilation at this meeting. Although the designation "Kalman filter" is often used to describe the overarching work, the series of talks will show that the scientific software and the kind of parallelization techniques that are being developed at the DAO are very different depending on the type of problem being considered, the extent to which the problem is mission critical, and the degree of Software Engineering that has to be applied.

Lyster, Peter M.

RISC Processors and High Performance Computing

This tutorial will discuss the top five RISC microprocessors and the parallel systems in which they are used. It will provide a unique cross-machine comparison not available elsewhere. The effective performance of these processors will be compared by citing standard benchmarks in the context of real applications. The latest NAS Parallel Benchmarks, both absolute performance and performance per dollar, will be listed. The next generation of the NPB will be described. The tutorial will conclude with a discussion of future directions in the field. Technology Transfer Considerations: All of these computer systems are commercially available internationally. Information about these processors is available in the public domain, mostly from the vendors themselves. The NAS Parallel Benchmarks and their results have been previously approved numerous times for public release, beginning back in 1991.

Bailey, David H.

High Performance Input/Output Systems for High Performance Computing and Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation

The approach of this task was to apply leading parallel computing research to a number of existing techniques for assimilation, and extract parameters indicating where and how input/output limits computational performance. The following was used for detailed knowledge of the application problems: 1. Developing a parallel input/output system specifically for this application 2. Extracting the important input/output characteristics of data assimilation problems; and 3. Building these characteristics s parameters into our runtime library (Fortran D/High Performance Fortran) for parallel input/output support.

Fox, Geoffrey C.

Application of high-performance computing to numerical simulation of human movement

We have examined the feasibility of using massively-parallel and vector-processing supercomputers to solve large-scale optimization problems for human movement. Specifically, we compared the computational expense of determining the optimal controls for the single support phase of gait using a conventional serial machine (SGI Iris 4D25), a MIMD parallel machine (Intel iPSC/860), and a parallel-vector-processing machine (Cray Y-MP 8/864). With the human body modeled as a 14 degree-of-freedom linkage actuated by 46 musculotendinous units, computation of the optimal controls for gait could take up to 3 months of CPU time on the Iris. Both the Cray and the Intel are able to reduce this time to practical levels. The optimal solution for gait can be found with about 77 hours of CPU on the Cray and with about 88 hours of CPU on the Intel. Although the overall speeds of the Cray and the Intel were found to be similar, the unique capabilities of each machine are better suited to different portions of the computational algorithm used. The Intel was best suited to computing the derivatives of the performance criterion and the constraints whereas the Cray was best suited to parameter optimization of the controls. These results suggest that the ideal computer architecture for solving very large-scale optimal control problems is a hybrid system in which a vector-processing machine is integrated into the communication network of a MIMD parallel machine.

NASA Discipline Musculoskeletal