The Architecture of Supercomputers

The Architecture of Supercomputers: Titan, A Case Study describes the architecture of the first member of an entirely new computing class, the graphic supercomputing workstation known as Titan.

This book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the Titan architecture, including the motivation, organization, and processes that created it. A survey of all the techniques to speed up computation is presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 reviews the issue of particular benchmarks and measures, while Chapter 4 analyzes a model of a concurrency hierarchy extending from the register set to the entire operating system. The architecture of Titan graphics supercomputer and its implementation are considered in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 examines the performance of Titan in terms of the various information flow data rates. The last chapter is devoted to the actual performance on benchmark kernels and how the architecture and implementation affect performance.

This publication is recommended for architects and engineers designing processors and systems.

Foreword

Preface

Chapter One Titan Architecture Overview

1.1 Visualization of Scientific Computations

1.2 System Overview

1.3 General Operation Principles

1.4 From Concept to Realization

1.5 The Next Generation

Chapter Two Architectural Evolution—Issues and Solutions in High-Performance Design

2.1 In the Beginning: Uniprocessors

2.2 Memory Performance Hierarchies

2.3 Speedup through Specialization

2.4 Concurrency through Overlap of Operations

2.5 Concurrency through Replication

2.6 Vector Operations

2.7 Limits to Speedup: Amdahl's Law

2.8 Summary

Chapter Three Performance and Balance

3.1 Hardware Performance Measures

3.2 Kiviat Graphs

3.3 System Performance Measures

3.4 The Importance of Balance

Chapter Four Hierarchical Model of Computation

4.1 A High-Level Model of Computation

4.2 A More Detailed Model of Computation

4.3 Primitive Operations

Chapter Five Titan Architecture and its Implementation

5.1 System Bus

5.2 Memory

5.3 Integer Unit

5.4 Vector Processing Unit

5.5 Graphics Processing Unit

5.6 I/O

5.7 Reliability Features

5.8 An Example of System Operation

5.9 Feature Summary

Chapter Six Architectural Analysis of Titan

6.1 System Bus

6.2 Memory

6.3 Integer Unit

6.4 Vector Processing Unit

6.5 Graphics Processing Unit

6.6 I/O

6.7 Analysis of System Throughput and Plumbing Diagram

Chapter Seven Benchmarks and Performance Measurement

7.1 LINPACK and LAPACK

7.2 Elementary Functions

7.3 The P3 Modifications for Improved Performance

7.4 The Eleven Rules of Supercomputer Design

Appendix A The Titan Bus

A.1 Introduction

A.2 Write and Read Bus Transactions

A.3 Other Transaction Types

A.4 Error Detection and Handling

Appendix B Titan P2 Specification Summary

Appendix C Glossary of Terms

References

Index