[Beowulf] Working for DUG, new thead

Prentice Bisbal pbisbal at pppl.gov
Wed Jun 20 07:04:40 PDT 2018


But what was his experience with the Phis? Was he happy with them? Do 
you know how much he had to rework his code to get good performance out 
of them?

On 06/19/2018 11:57 PM, John Hearns via Beowulf wrote:
> This thread is going fast!
>
> Prentice Bisbal wrote:
> > I often wonder if that misleading marketing is one of the reasons why 
> the Xeon Phi has already been canned. I know a lot of people who were 
> excited for the Xeon Phi, but > I don't know any who ever bought the 
> Xeon Phis once they came out.
>
> In the UK at my last company we had a customer in the defence sector 
> who bought lots of Xeon Phi. Great guy, full of enthusiasm and good to 
> work with (Hello Kirk!)
> They were installed with IBM Platform before I joined the company. I 
> re-installed the cluster with Bright which brought it up to date.
> That is the cluster which used Teradici PCOIP to connect via secure 
> fibre optic links.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 20 June 2018 at 04:49, Stu Midgley <sdm900 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:sdm900 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     we initially used them as standalone systems (ie. rsh a code onto
>     them and run it)
>
>     today we use them in offload mode (ie. the host would push
>     memory+commands onto them and pull the results off - all via pragmas).
>
>     our last KNC systems were 2RU with 8x7120 phi's... which is a
>     2.1kW system.  They absolutely fly...
>
>
>     On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 5:48 AM Ryan Novosielski
>     <novosirj at rutgers.edu <mailto:novosirj at rutgers.edu>> wrote:
>
>         We bought KNC a long time ago and keep meaning to get them to
>         a place where they can be used and just haven’t. Do you mount
>         filesystems from them? We have GPFS storage, primarily, and
>         would have to re-export it via NFS I suppose if we want the
>         cards to use that storage. I’ve seen complaints about the
>         stability of that setup. I didn’t try to build the GPFS
>         portability layer for Phi — not sure whether to think it would
>         or wouldn’t work (I guess I’d be inclined to doubt it).
>
>         > On Jun 14, 2018, at 12:02 AM, Stu Midgley <sdm900 at gmail.com
>         <mailto:sdm900 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>         >
>         > Phi is dead... Long live phi...
>         >
>         > By which I mean, while the Phi as a chip is going away, its
>         concepts live on.  Massive number of cores, large
>         vectorisation and high speed memory (and fucking high heat
>         load - we do ~350W/socket). So, while the product code will
>         disappear, phi lives on.
>         >
>         > For KNC I did a lot of customisation to MPSS to get it to
>         work... and we haven't been able to shift from one of the very
>         early version.  We love the KNC... we get 8 in 2RU which is
>         awesome density (1.1kW/RU)
>         >
>         > For KNL its just x86 with a big vectorisation unit (700W/RU).
>         >
>         > In both cases you have to be very very careful how you
>         manage memory.
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         > On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 10:33 AM Joe Landman
>         <joe.landman at gmail.com <mailto:joe.landman at gmail.com>> wrote:
>         > I'm curious about your next gen plans, given Phi's roadmap.
>         >
>         > On 6/13/18 9:17 PM, Stu Midgley wrote:
>         >> low level HPC means... lots of things.  BUT we are a huge
>         Xeon Phi shop and need low-level programmers ie. avx512,
>         careful cache/memory management (NOT openmp/compiler
>         vectorisation etc).
>         >
>         > I played around with avx512 in my rzf code.
>         https://github.com/joelandman/rzf/blob/master/avx2/rzf_avx512.c
>         <https://github.com/joelandman/rzf/blob/master/avx2/rzf_avx512.c>
>         .  Never really spent a great deal of time on it, other than
>         noting that using avx512 seemed to downclock the core a bit on
>         Skylake.
>         >
>         > Which dev/toolchain are you using for Phi?  I set up the
>         MPSS bit for a customer, and it was pretty bad (2.6.32 kernel,
>         etc.).  Flaky control plane, and a painful host->coprocessor
>         interface.  Did you develop your own?  Definitely curious.
>         >
>         >
>         >>
>         >>
>         >>
>         >> On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 1:08 AM Jonathan Engwall
>         <engwalljonathanthereal at gmail.com
>         <mailto:engwalljonathanthereal at gmail.com>> wrote:
>         >> John Hearne wrote:
>         >> > Stuart Midgley works for DUG?  They are currently
>         >> > recruiting for an HPC manager in London... Interesting...
>         >>
>         >> Recruitment at DUG wants to call me about Low Level HPC. I
>         have at least until 6pm.
>         >> I am excited but also terrified. My background is C and now
>         JavaScript, mostly online course work and telnet MUDs.
>         >> Any suggestions are very much needed.
>         >> What must a "low level HPC" know on day 1???
>         >> Jonathan Engwall
>         >> engwalljonathanthereal at gmail.com
>         <mailto:engwalljonathanthereal at gmail.com>
>         >>
>         >> _______________________________________________
>         >> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
>         <mailto:Beowulf at beowulf.org> sponsored by Penguin Computing
>         >> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe)
>         visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>         <http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf>
>         >>
>         >>
>         >> --
>         >> Dr Stuart Midgley
>         >> sdm900 at gmail.com <mailto:sdm900 at gmail.com>
>         >>
>         >>
>         >> _______________________________________________
>         >> Beowulf mailing list,
>         >> Beowulf at beowulf.org <mailto:Beowulf at beowulf.org>
>         >>  sponsored by Penguin Computing
>         >> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
>         >> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>         <http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf>
>         >
>         > --
>         > Joe Landman
>         > e:
>         > joe.landman at gmail.com <mailto:joe.landman at gmail.com>
>         >
>         > t: @hpcjoe
>         > c: +1 734 612 4615
>         > w:
>         > https://scalability.org
>         >
>         > g:
>         > https://github.com/joelandman
>         >
>         > l:
>         > https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman
>         <https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelandman>
>         > _______________________________________________
>         > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
>         <mailto:Beowulf at beowulf.org> sponsored by Penguin Computing
>         > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe)
>         visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>         <http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf>
>         >
>         >
>         > --
>         > Dr Stuart Midgley
>         > sdm900 at gmail.com <mailto:sdm900 at gmail.com>
>         > _______________________________________________
>         > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
>         <mailto:Beowulf at beowulf.org> sponsored by Penguin Computing
>         > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe)
>         visit
>         https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beowulf.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fbeowulf&data=02%7C01%7Cnovosirj%40rutgers.edu%7C89d9a1fe40cd40448a5708d5d1abc4d9%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C0%7C636645458049748846&sdata=dEUacidlV69%2FM8NEdObFNmSOsOObZpPAF4NlfI7joTw%3D&reserved=0
>         <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beowulf.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fbeowulf&data=02%7C01%7Cnovosirj%40rutgers.edu%7C89d9a1fe40cd40448a5708d5d1abc4d9%7Cb92d2b234d35447093ff69aca6632ffe%7C1%7C0%7C636645458049748846&sdata=dEUacidlV69%2FM8NEdObFNmSOsOObZpPAF4NlfI7joTw%3D&reserved=0>
>
>         --
>         ____
>         || \\UTGERS,   
>          |---------------------------*O*---------------------------
>         ||_// the State  |         Ryan Novosielski -
>         novosirj at rutgers.edu <mailto:novosirj at rutgers.edu>
>         || \\ University | Sr. Technologist - 973/972.0922 (2x0922)
>         ~*~ RBHS Campus
>         ||  \\    of NJ  | Office of Advanced Research Computing - MSB
>         C630, Newark
>              `'
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Dr Stuart Midgley
>     sdm900 at gmail.com <mailto:sdm900 at gmail.com>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
>     <mailto:Beowulf at beowulf.org> sponsored by Penguin Computing
>     To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
>     http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>     <http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.beowulf.org/pipermail/beowulf/attachments/20180620/ad6bbd72/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Beowulf mailing list