Project News

Report from AHM workshop on trends, issues and challenges in future high-end computing

The S(o)OS AHM Workshop on trends, issues and challenges in future high-end computing was held on September, 14th, during the All-Hands Meeting (AHM), in Cardiff (UK). Discussion focused on the subject of the expected development in future high-end computing systems and current limitations. The workshop was split into a presentation and a panel discussion session. Roughly 30 people participated actively in the discussions. The panel consisted of: Dr. Mark Parsons, Dr. Omer Rana, Dr. Jan Kuper and Dr. Tommaso Cucinotta.

The participants in both workshops shared the view that the current approaches towards dealing with scalability is insufficient for the requirements of future systems. We can distinguish in particular between hardware and software issues: whilst in particular the presenters of session 1 suggested means to realise more scalable software for data and resource management, the panelists showed a slightly more pessimistic view on the limitations of hardware scalability even in the long-term future.

Session 1 (Presentation Session):

• Matthias Assel: Convergence of HPC and PC: really?
• Shou Liang: Hybrid HPC – Establishing a Bi-Stable Dual Boot Cluster for Linux with OSCAR Middleware and Windows HPC 2008 R2
• Lutz Schubert: Next Generation Operating Systems
• Christiaan Baaij: Functional Hardware Specification
• Sai Narasimhamurthy: Storage Quality of Service for High Performance Compute Clouds
• Liangxiu Han: Towards a Cost-Based, Automated Optimisation Framework for Distributed Streaming Tasks

Session 2 (Panel Discussion):

• Dr. Mark Parsons:
• Dr. Jan Kuper:
• Dr. Omer Rana:
• Dr. Tommaso Cucinotta: Challenges in Operating System Design for Future Many-Core Systems