A system software architecture for high-end computing
David S. Greenberg, Ron Brightwell, Lee Ann Fisk, Arthur B. ‘Barney’ Maccabe, Rolf Riesen · 1997
Large MPP systems can neither solve grand-challenge scientific problems nor enable large scale industrial and governmental simulations if they rely on extensions to workstation system software. At Sandia National Laboratories we have developed, with our vendors, a new system architecture for high-end computing. Highest performance is achieved by providing applications with a light-weight interface to a collection of processing nodes. Usability is provided by creating node partitions specialized for user access, networking, and I/O. The entire system is glued together by a data movement interface which we call portals. Portals allow data to flow between processing nodes with minimal system overhead while maintaining a suitable degree of protection and reconfigurability.