High Performance Computing on Clusters?

Abstract

The history of computing has always also been a history of hunting for higher performance. Until recently it was accepted that to go beyond the current sweet spot in terms of performance per money of available machines, it was required to invest. In fact, to invest enormously. While dedicated high end machines still have their place, and probably always will, the construction of special machines close to the top and that of clusters of less dramatic machines co-evolved to something quite comparable. As a result, engineering sparks could bridge the gab and we now find high-performance system area and even local area networks that derive from the backbone communication infrastructure of massively parallel supercomputers.

Being faced with the possibility to assemble ones own supercomputer out of off-the-shelf components, such as high-end PCs, changed the performance scene markedly. The hardware substrate for modest to impressive supercomputing equipment is now suddenly ubiquitously available. As a result, not surprisingly, the parallel computing are attracted a boost of attention. Also not surprisingly, there is a desire to reduce the traditional reliance on a select few who intimately understood the inner workings of the latest generation supercomputers to really make them fly. Finally, there is often a need to share the computing infrastructure between virtual supercomputers and the more mundane everyday use of the `borrowed' workstations. Methodology and software infrastructure need to be almost reinvented to properly address all the new challenges - but without losing what has been learnt in the past.

This special issue of SCPE suggests that there are a lot of activities on the way indeed. As a result, the editors had great difficulty selecting papers out of the overwhelmingly large number of submissions. The selected articles both demonstrate diversity and quality of this still relatively young field.

We would like to express our deep gratitude to Prof. Marcin Paprzycki, Editor-in-chief of SCPE for giving us an opportunity to Guest-Edit this special issue. This issue would not be possible without the help of referees who worked very hard to review all the submitted papers. We would like to thank them all:

Alessandro BevilacquaAlfred WeaverAmin VahdatAmitabh DaveAmy AponAndrzej GoscinskiBenedict GomesBoleslaw SzymanskiBoris WeissmanCho-Li WangChung-Ta KingDan HydeDavid BaderDavide RossettiDomenico TaliaDorina PetriuDror FeitelsonEl-ghazali TalbiErhan SaridoganErnst BiersackGangan AgrawalGihwan ChoGiuseppe CiaccioHarjinder SandhuHye-Seon MeengJamel GafsiJay FenwickJianyong WangJohn DoughertyKennith BirmanLars RzymianowiczLori PollockLuis SilvaMaciej GolebiewskiMark BakerMark ClementMarrianne WinslettMathew ChidesterMichele ColajanniOrly KremienPaddy NixonPaul RoePutchong UthayopasQuinn SnellRainer FraedrichRajeev RajeRajeev ThakurRicky KwokRobert BrunnerRobert ToddSamuel RussToni CortesYong ChoYoshio TanakaYu-Kwong Kwok

We hope you will find this special issue interesting.

Rajkumar Buyya
Monash University

Clemens Szyperski
Queensland University of Technology