Introduction

In a nutshell, High-Performance Computing (HPC) is the use of powerful computer systems (supercomputers or cluster of computers) to solve the substantial technical and numerical problems that occurs in the formulation of complex physical, biological and financial systems. This page contains a collection of articles about HPC; they are organised by the following topics:

• Issues
• Architecture
• Performance
• Benchmark

Issues

• Twelve Ways to Fool the Masses: 10 Years Later , D. H. Bailey, ISC2004, Heidelberg, Germany, June 23-25, 2004.
• Performance of Future High-End Computers , D. H. Bailey
• Federal Plan for High-End Computing: Report of the High-End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HECRTF) , National Coordination Office for Information Technology Research and Developemnt , May 10 2004.
• Petaflop Imperative , A. Ricadela, Information Week, June 21, 2004.
• Council on Competitiveness Study of U. S. Industrial HPC Users , E. Joseph, A. Snell, and C. G. Willard, IDC, Framingham, MA, July 2004.

Architectures

• DARPA Selects Three High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) Projects (pdf) , DARP
• DARPA HPCS Cray Cascade Project , Cray, Inc.
• DARPA HPCS IBM PERCS Project , IBM, Inc.
• DARPA HPCS Sun Hero Project (pdf) , Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• BlueGene/L: the next generation of scalable supercomputer , L. Kissel, D.A. Nowak, M. Seager, and K. Yates, B, SC2002, November 18, 2002.
• An Overview of the BlueGene/L Supercomputer , The BlueGene/L Team, SC2002, November 2002.
• ASCI Red Homepage
• ASCI Purple Benchmark Page .
• ASCI White Homepage
• Earth Simulator Homepage
• The Design Specification and Initial Implementation of the Red Storm Architecture-in partnership with Cray Inc. , CCIM, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, 2003.
• Vector Computing: The Key to Sustained Performance?, M. Reschm, NEC User Group, NUG-25, May 2004, paperavailable from resch@hlrs.de
• Cray X1 Architecture and Hardware Overview, Oak Ridge National Lab Cray X1 Tutorial, J. L. Schwarzmeier, Oak Ridge, TN, Nov. 2002; paper available from jads@cray.com
• A New High Bandwidth Supercomputer: The Cray X1, Technology Assessment , E. Joseph, II et al., IDC, Framingham, MA, Nov. 2002;
• Cray Launches X1 for Extreme Supercomputing , R. Partridge, D. H. Brown Associates, Inc., Port Chester, NY, Nov. 14, 2002.
• The Cray XD1 High Performance Computer: Closing the gap between peak and achievable performance in high performance computing , white paper, WP-0020404, Cray Inc., Seattle, WA, 2004.
• The AHPCRC Cray X1 Primer , Network Computing Services, 2003.
• Building High-Performance Linux Clusters (Sponsored by Appro) , L. G. Harbaugh, June 2004.

Performance

• Papers and Presentations on Cray X1 Evaluation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
• Early Cray X1 Experience at the Army High Performance Computing Research Center , P. Muzio and A. Johnson, July 2003
• Total Life Cycle Cost Comparison: Cray X1 and Pentium 4 Cluster , P. Muzio and R. Walsh, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003. (slides )
• Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications on the Cray X1 Architecture: Experiences, Algorithms, and Performance Analysis , A. Johnson, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003. (slides )
• Implementing Finite Difference Codes on the Cray X1 , S. C. Garrick and N Settumba, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003. (slides )
• Modeling the Weather on a Cray X1 , T. Mays, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003. (slides )
• Cray X1 Evaluation , A. S. Bland et al., Oak Ridge Technical Report, ORNL/TM-2003/67, March 2003. Early Operations Experience with the Cray X1 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Computational Sciences, A.S. Bland, R. Alexander, S. M. Carter, and K. D. Matney, Sr., Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003.
• DOE Ultrascale Evaluation Plan of the Cray X1 , M. R. Fahey and J. B. White III, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003.
• An Optimization Experiment with the Community Land Model on the Cray X1 , J. B. White, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003.
• Early Evaluation of the Cray X1 at Oak Ridge National laboratory , P. H. Worley and T. H. Dunigan, Proceedings, 45th Cray User Group Conference, Columbus, OH, May 12-16, 2003.
• Early Evaluation of the Cray X1 , T. H. Dunigan, Jr., M. R. Fahey, J. B. White III, and P. H. Worley, Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Conference on High Performance Networking and Computing (SC03), Phoenix, AZ, Nov. 15-21, 2003.

Benchmarks

• Top 500 Supercomputer Sites
• Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, SPEC Benchmark
• NAS Parallel Benchmarks
• PmaC HPC Benchmark Suite
• IDC Balanced HPC Benchmark Rating Report
• HPC Chanllenge Benchmark

Disclaimer

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Use at your own risk.