INDUSTRY

By Chris O'Neal - Monday, the Gelato Federation meeting started in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Top Itanium scientists, developers, engineers, and end users from Gelato sponsor and member institutions will attend this 2-1/2 day, highly-technical event. To learn more, Supercomputing Online spoke with Dr. MARK K. SMITH, Managing Director of the Gelato Federation. He works with Federation members and sponsors around the world, fostering collaborative relationships among members, sponsors, and the general community to advance the Linux-Itanium platform. Dr. Smith leads a technical team at University of Illinois and dedicates time to educating the general community about the advantages of the platform. Prior to joining Gelato, he worked in the software industry for 10 years. Dr. Smith holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Illinois. SC Online: Please provide a brief description of the Gelato Federation meeting and what you hope to accomplish. Dr. MARK K. SMITH: The theme of our October 2-5, 2005 meeting in Brazil is "The Itanium ERA: Education, Research, Application." During this 3-day event, we will address current high-performance computing issues and collaborative solutions specific to Linux on the Intel Itanium processor. There will be two dozen technically-rich presentations by key Itanium developers, researchers, and end users; formal papers; poster sessions; and the exchange of information in formal and informal settings. Full details are available at its Web site. One of the main focuses of our meetings is to inform and educate so attendees can maximize the performance of their Itanium system investments. The Itanium processor is very versatile and there are many ways in which applications can be tuned. The analogy I use is that the Itanium is like a fine sports car. You must know how to tune the engine to maximize performance on the track. Ultimately the goal of tool vendors is to make this optimization process transparent and totally automatic so the user gets fantastic out-of-the-box performance without having to know what is going on under the hood. Gelato is addressing this concern through member research, GCC improvements, and the Gelato Vanilla project. The Gelato Federation is the heart of the Linux-Itanium community. In addition to education, our meetings serve as a networking venue for researchers, system vendors, industrial users, and ISVs. Our members and sponsors enjoy collaborating on cutting-edge R&D, sharing their experience, and offering feedback, all for the purpose of advancing the platform and the end-user's experience. SC Online: Why did you decide to meet in Brazil? Dr. MARK K. SMITH: Latin America is a high-growth region for computer deployment in the research lab and enterprise arenas. In response to the growing demand, many Latin American research institutions, supercomputing centers, and corporations are strengthening their programs and investment in high-end computing resources. The Gelato Federation now has eight member institutions in Latin America. To encourage further growth in the region, we felt it would be very beneficial to hold a meeting in Brazil at Gelato member the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS). SC Online: This is a venue where attendees can interact with experts who have used Linux-Itanium platform. Please describe in technical terms the ways you work together to verify and optimize Itanium-specific tools and software. Dr. MARK K. SMITH: The optimization process involves several steps: 1) Ensure that the application is 64-bit clean and can be compiled with default GCC or icc options. 2) Determine the best compiler optimization flags to use for maximum performance of the application. This may include the -O series and profile guided optimization (PGO). 3) Use performance analysis tools to uncover hotspots -- areas of the code that are executed frequently. Determine if optimization opportunities exist and tune the code to maximize performance. At every step, the validity of the optimization and tuning must be checked with real-world test case data. SC Online: Supercomputing professionals attend the meeting to learn more about strategies relevant to their needs. So can you tell our readers a bit more about the types of attendees and how they are planning to use Linux on Itanium solutions? Dr. MARK K. SMITH: Many of the attendees at our meetings come from research centers, supercomputing centers, national labs, and universities. These types of institutions were the first to embrace Itanium. Among this group, there are providers of computing cycles, users of computing cycles, and researchers. The balance of perspectives has been very healthy, causing the providers to have a cutting-edge view of platform development while allowing the researchers to keep real-world issues in mind as they conduct their research. As Itanium penetrates more into the enterprise space, we are seeing a growth in the participation of industry in our community and meeting attendance. This has added a new and robust dynamic to our meetings and will further enhance the attendee experience. Our membership represents a very wide and varied use of the platform. They support research and industrial uses that include computational fluid dynamics, weather forecasting, oil exploration, bioinformatics, drug discovery, and high-energy physics to name just a few. SC Online: If you would, please tell the readers about Itanium's roadmap. Dr. MARK K. SMITH: I'll leave the Itanium roadmap to Intel. At our May '05 meeting in San Jose, Intel brought a Montecito demo machine for members to interact with and run their own software. In addition to the demo system, Cameron McNairy, an Intel Montecito architect, gave a presentation entitled "Montecito: A Look Inside the Next Itanium Processor." This presentation, available at http://www.gelato.org/pdf/oct2005/agenda.pdf, detailed changes to the Itanium hardware and implications to programmers. SC Online: What are you most proud of regarding the meeting? Dr. MARK K. SMITH: We are very proud of the educational component of our meetings, the exchange of in-depth technical knowledge among attendees, and the collegiality of the community. Our meetings are providing tremendous value to attendees -- they walk away with tangible knowledge to help them use their Itanium systems more efficiently. In addition to education and exchange of knowledge and experience, our meetings have created a great sense of community around the Linux-Itanium platform. I personally look forward to seeing my Gelato colleagues at each meeting. Specifically for this meeting, we are hosting an Itanium tools roundtable where member and sponsor experts will discuss various optimizing tools available to the Linux-Itanium platform. BEA will be presenting on JRocket, an outstanding JVM for Linux Itanium. Several presentations will highlight virtualization on the Itanium. And Gelato’s GCC improvements group will meet to review progress and make plans for future improvements. The full program agenda is available at http://gealto.org/pdf/oct2005/agenda.pdf. SC Online: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Dr. MARK K. SMITH: The end game is to get Itanium more fully adopted into the enterprise space. To get there we must have increased tool reliability, out-of-the-box performance, and strong ISV support for the Itanium. In the near term, the Gelato community is working for Itanium's broader adoption via education, expanding the Itanium application base, and tool improvement. Moving forward, recruiting more industrial involvement in the Gelato Federation is critical. For the Gelato community to be complete and for us to continue to have strong forward momentum, we need additional engagement from HW vendors, ISVs, and industrial customers. Supercomputing Online would like to thank Dr. Mark Smith and Nan Holda for their time and insight.