Parallel machines of high capability are being designed and built to run Software
for scientific and engineering modeling. This project is conducting research to create
a simulation environment that allows applications to be developed, tested and tuned via
simulation of the future machine, while allowing machine designers to tune their
architectural choices to benefit a specific collection of applications. It aims at
simulating petascale machines with over a million processor cores. The project
builds upon previous research on migratable objects, and a preliminary simulation
system developed in earlier research. The software developed in this project is
being distributed via the Internet, and consists of an emulator and a simulator.
The emulator allows application developers to develop and test their application
in a realistic petascale environment and generate traces for the simulator.
The simulator uses the traces, along with a model of the architecture, to generate
detailed performance data that can be used to tune the applications and to analyze
the architectural choices under realistic application loads.
Software for Scientific and Engineering modeling can make a significant impact on
society through better understanding of physical phenomenon and improved design of
engineered artifacts. The results of this project, including the simulation software,
will lead to effective use of the petascale computing facilities being developed and
deployed nationally, for such software. It will reduce delays in software tuning.
The project will also help train a new generation in techniques for effectively
harnessing large parallel machines to society's goals.
Project Publications:
Software Products:
Enhancements to the Charm++ distribution, including all the
simulations tools that we developed, are available
here
Related Links:
Materials from all Charm++ workshops, including archivals
of tutorial presentations, are available at
this site