WTEC Panel on High End Computing in Japan Site visits: March 28

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WTEC Panel on High End Computing in JapanSite
visits March 28 April 3, 2004
Study Commissioned By National Coordination
Office Department of Energy National Science
Foundation National Aeronautics and Space
Administration

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WTEC Mission

• Provide assessments of science and technology in
  a variety of fields
• Has conducted over 60 international technology
  assessments using on-site expert panels, far more
  than any other U.S. organization
• Studies funded by U.S. Government agencies
• All results published openly
• Has sent over 30 delegations to Japan since 1989

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Purpose Scope of this Study

• Gather information on current status and future
  trends in Japanese high end computing
• Govt agencies, research communities, vendors
• Provide comparison of Japanese HEC RD and
  applications activities with those in the U.S.
• Focus on long-term HEC research in Japan,
  including follow-on machines to ES other archs
• Provide review of ES development process and
  operational experience
• Include user experience and its impact on
  computer science and computational science
  communities
• Determine HEC areas amenable for Japan-U.S.
  cooperation to accelerate future advances

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Panel Members
Al Trivelpiece (Panel Chair) Former Director Oak
Ridge National Laboratory
Peter Paul Deputy Director, ST Brookhaven
National Laboratory
Rupak Biswas Group Lead, NAS Division NASA Ames
Research Center
Kathy Yelick Computer Science Professor University
of California, Berkeley
Jack Dongarra Director, Innovative Computing
Lab University of Tennessee Oak Ridge
National Laboratory
Horst Simon (Advisor) Director, NERSC Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab
Dan Reed (Advisor) Computer Science
Professor University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill
Praveen Chaudhari (Advisor) Director Brookhaven
National Laboratory
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Schedule of Study

• Jan 9 Kick-off meeting
• Mar 28 to Apr 3 Travel in Japan
• May 24, 25 Workshop in Washington, DC, to
  discuss panel findings
• Aug 31 Final report completed and published
• All site visit report drafts will be verified by
  hosts for accuracy prior to publication

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Sites Visited March 29

• Earth Simulator Center
• Located in Yokohama at JAMSTEC
• 500 MHz SX-6 vector processor 8 CPUs/node 640
  nodes 40 TFlops/s peak single-stage crossbar
• Frontier Research System for Global Change
• Within same JAMSTEC campus
• Predict global changes via simulation of coupled
  high-fidelity atmosphere, ocean, and land models
• National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS)
• Located in Gifu (near Nagoya)
• Host site for Large Helical Device (LHD)
• Plasma calculations with SX-7/160

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Sites Visited March 30

• Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
• Formed 10/1/03 by merging National Aerospace
  Laboratory (NAL), National Space
  DevelopmentAgency (NASDA), and Institute of
  Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS)
• Numerical Simulator III Fujitsu PrimePower
  HPC2500 1.3 GHz SPARC64 V architecture 8
  CPUs/board16 boards/cabinet 14 cabinets 9.3
  TFlops/s peak
• University of Tokyo
• Met with Prof. Yoshio Oyanagi of the Computer
  Science Department
• Provided comprehensive history of HEC in
  Japanfrom 1975 to present

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Sites Visited March 30

• Council for Science and Technology Policy (CSTP)
• Cabinet Office (reports to PM)
• Sets strategic directions for ST rates
  proposals
• Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science,
  and Technology (MEXT)
• Funds most of ST RD activities in Japan
• Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)
• Administers industrial policy
• Funds RD projects with ties to industry

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Sites Visited March 31

• Fujitsu
• Have abandoned their traditional vector
  architectures in favor of commodity cluster
  technology
• PrimePower series fully-configured system
  contains 16K CPUs, 85 TFlops/s peak, 64 TB of
  memory
• Pentium processors connected with Infiniband (8
  Gb/s) software based on SCore developed by RWCP
• Tokyo Institute of Technology
• Met with Prof. Satoshi Matsuoka of the Global
  Scientific Information and Computing Center
• Obtained TiTechs role in and his perspective on
  Grid computing in Japan

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Sites Visited March 31

• National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science
  and Technology (AIST)
• Visited Grid Technology Research Center (Tsukuba)
• Grid middleware new Grid RD cluster
  (14TFlops/s)
• High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
  (KEK)
• Premier high-energy physics laboratory
• Operates Belle experiments with large data Grid
• Primary HEC effort in Lattice-Gauge computing
• Tsukuba University
• Visited the Center for Computational Physics
• Expanded on 4/1 to include broader spectrum of
  computational science

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Sites Visited April 1

• Hitachi
• First vector machine in Japan S810 in 1987
• Pseudo-vectors SR2201, SR8000, SR11000 (2003)
• Research Organization for Information Science and
  Technology (RIST)
• Earth Simulator design started here by Hajime
  Miyoshi
• Serves as a catalyst for computational science
  and engineering, from climate modeling to
  nanotechnology
• IBM-Japan
• To get a US companys perspective of HEC in Japan

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Sites Visited April 1

• Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
  (RIKEN)
• Visited the Advanced Center for Computing and
  Communication
• 2048P PC cluster (10TFlops/s)
• Major participant in Japanese Grid computing
  initiative
• National Research Grid Initiative (NAREGI)
• Overseeing the Grid effort in Japan
• Consortium of universities and national
  laboratories

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Sites Visited April 2

• Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SECI)
• Established in 1993 as a joint venture between
  Sony Corp and Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
• Develops and markets PS1 and PS2 (6 GFlops/s
  vector performance)
• NEC
• Committed to vector architecture because SX
  series a technology driver for other components
  SX-7 up to 64 nodes 32 CPUs/node 18 TFlops/s
  peak 16 TB memory
• Also has TX-7 server series 16-way SMP based on
  IA64 Merced

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Sites Visited April 2

• Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI)
• Visited Center for Promotion of Computational
  Science and Engineering in two locations (in
  Tokai and Ueno)
• Lead laboratory in plasma fusion (Tokomak) and
  nuclear reactor design