Intel-BSC Exascale Lab

The Intel-BSC Exascale Lab collaboration between Intel and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center aims at carrying out cooperative research on some areas that are considered key for future exascale computing.  The center started activities in November 2011.

The research builds on the vision and technologies being developed at BSC with two major background components in the areas of programming models and performance analysis tools, in particular:

• OmpSs (http://pm.bsc.es/content/ompss-programming-model), an extension of the OpenMP programming models with directionality clauses to specify the access to the operands that is used by the runtime to compute dependences between tasks at runtime and to automatically perform data transfers in heterogeneous accelerated  and distributed systems.
• BSC tools (http://www.bsc.es/computer-sciences/performance-tools): including an instrumentation package (Extrae) a performance data browser (Paraver) and a simulator (Dimemas) for what if studies. In the last years, the tools have recently been extended with Performance Analytics capabilities leveraging techniques from other areas of science and engineering in order to squeeze the captured data for more information and insight.

The Lab aims at further developing the functionality and utilization of the infrastructure, evaluating its potential and how it can target the Exascale needs. The tight communication and feedback between Intel and BSC staff provides a broad vision and experience of great mutual benefit.