ACADEMIA

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are trying to predict how supercomputers of the future will perform. The research arm of the Department of Defense (news - web sites) has awarded a three-year, $4.2 million grant for the lab's computer and computational sciences division to performance analysis and modeling, create software tools and evaluate networks. The defense agency wants to develop by 2008 the optimal design for the next generation of machines, which will be capable of sustained performance greater than 1 quadrillion operations per second, or one petaflop. Los Alamos was chosen for the project because of the lab's expertise in advanced supercomputer architecture, including pioneering work in performance modeling, which computer system designers use to explore how different design options will affect performance. "We're excited about the enormous potential of performance modeling and the opportunity to apply a variety of methodologies that we developed to help in the design these future supercomputers," said Adolfy Hoisie, who heads the computer division's performance and architectures laboratory. Members of the team captured the Best Paper Award at the recent international Supercomputing 2003 Conference. The team identified the source of a serious but previously undetected performance problem on Los Alamos' Q machine, the second-most-powerful computer in the world. They eliminated the problem and demonstrated how to significantly improve performance in an analysis applicable to other large, cluster-based supercomputers.