IDC's HPC Forum starts another Benchmark InitiativeDallas 07 Nov 2000 Many tried, but to date all efforts failed to define benchmarks that go beyond the Linpack used in the TOP500 and have wide acceptance by users. Eurobench, Parbench, the NAS kernels, and many others. But, nevertheless, the HPC User Forum organised by IDC, representing leading supercomputer users in government, industry and academia, reported progress on a plan to create better performance tests for this most powerful class of computers. Speaking at the SC2000 supercomputing conference in Dallas, HPC User Forum officials said improved tests are needed to advance scientific research, industrial engineering and classified government work, all of which rely heavily on supercomputers. It would be too easy to predict that also this very US oriented benchmark initiative will fail, but the approach, identifying a set of "representative" benchmarks is not different from earlier attempts. Supercomputer architectures from different vendors evolving into the same direction, could, however, help this initiative.
"Despite the strategic and economic importance of supercomputers, or HPC
systems, there is no widely accepted standard for evaluating their performance
today", said Debra Goldfarb, IDC group vice president, Worldwide Systems and
Servers. "It is not uncommon for user organisations to find that the actual
performance of a new, multi-million-dollar supercomputer is a small fraction of
the stellar results produced on today's limited tests. Although these Linpack
and peak performance test scores are nearly meaningless beyond `chest-thumping'
publicity, in the absence of anything better they continue to be emphasized in
many procurements."
Team Engaged To Develop Benchmarks. IDC analyst Earl Joseph II said the HPC User
Forum has engaged a group headed by Robert Lucas, head of HPC Research at the
Department of Energy's National Energy Research Computing Center (NERSC), to
develop a new benchmark suite to test the overall scalable performance of HPC
systems, and an additional benchmark initiative to test performance on a broad
range of specific application codes. In a mid-September meeting, HPC User Forum
members endorsed the preliminary plan outlined by Lucas.
"Bob Lucas and the other members of this NERSC and University of Tennessee team
are world-class experts at benchmarking HPC systems," Joseph said. "They have
years of leading experience and were involved in the development of the NAS
Parallel Benchmarks and `Top500.'"
`Short List' Identified For Overall Scalable Performance Benchmarks. Lucas
reported that since the September meeting his team has identified a "short list"
of candidate tests for the overall scalable performance benchmark suite. This
suite is intended to measure processor performance, as well as internal memory
speed, disks, and external networks.
"We will now bring this selection process quickly to a conclusion in
collaboration with the HPC user community," said Lucas. "For the processor (CPU)
benchmark we intend to collaborate with the `Top500' organization. Our objective
is to supplement, not replace, the Linpack test on which the `Top500' rankings
are based," Lucas added.
Development Schedules Outlined. For the scalable benchmark suite, Lucas said,
his team plans by the second quarter of 2001 to complete the following: finalize
the selection of tests; engage HPC leaders to define an initial set of
orthogonal benchmark kernels; develop pencil and paper descriptions and
representative codes; and establish a Web site and publish initial results.
For the full application benchmark suite, in the same timeframe the NERSC and
University of Tennessee team plan to identify an initial application and a
domain expert partner; develop a generic methodology for benchmarking full
applications; and deploy the prototype with the partner.
Benefits to Stakeholders. Goldfarb said the new tests will benefit all
stakeholders:
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