The IBM POWER7 HUB module: A terabyte interconnect switch for high-performance computer systems

Arimilli, Baba; Baumgartner, S.; Clark, Scott; Dreps, Dan; Siljenberg, D.; Maki, Andrew

doi:10.1109/hotchips.2010.7480080

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Aries [2], the most modern interconnection technology from Cray, uses routers of 48 ports, and the Torrent hub employed in PERCS relies on a switch with 56 ports, [5]. Higher degree tiled routers are expected in the future.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient Routing Mechanisms for Dragonfly Networks

García

Vallejo

Beivide

et al. 2013

2013 42nd International Conference on Parallel Processing

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Abstract-High-radix hierarchical networks are costeffective topologies for large scale computers. In such networks, routers are organized in supernodes, with local and global interconnections. These networks, known as Dragonflies, outperform traditional topologies such as multi-trees or tori, in cost and scalability. However, depending on the traffic pattern, network congestion can lead to degraded performance. Misrouting (non-minimal routing) can be employed to avoid saturated global or local links. Nevertheless, with the current deadlock avoidance mechanisms used for these networks, supporting misrouting implies routers with a larger number of virtual channels. This exacerbates the buffer memory requirements that constitute one of the main constraints in high-radix switches.In this paper we introduce two novel deadlock-free routing mechanisms for Dragonfly networks that support on-thefly adaptive routing. Using these schemes both global and local misrouting are allowed employing the same number of virtual channels as in previous proposals. Opportunistic Local Misrouting obtains the best performance by providing the highest routing freedom, and relying on a deadlock-free escape path to the destination for every packet. However, it requires Virtual Cut-Through flow-control. By contrast, Restricted Local Misrouting prevents the appearance of cycles thanks to a restriction of the possible routes within supernodes. This makes this mechanism suitable for both Virtual Cut-Through and Wormhole networks.Evaluations show that the proposed deadlock-free routing mechanisms prevent the most frequent pathological issues of Dragonfly networks. As a result, they provide higher performance than previous schemes, while requiring the same area devoted to router buffers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient Routing Mechanisms for Dragonfly Networks

García

Vallejo

Beivide

et al. 2013

2013 42nd International Conference on Parallel Processing

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“…As far as the authors are aware there is currently no published analysis on the P7-IH other than descriptions in terms of its peak capabilities. This includes details on the P7 processor [13], the hub chip [2] and the interconnection network [1].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, pre-release versions of the IBM Hypervisor, AIX, and the IBM MPI protocol stack were used. All of the experiments we report here were carried out with direct routing mode of the Hub chip [1,2].…”

Section: Low Level Performance Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An early performance analysis of POWER7-IH HPC systems

Barker

Hoisie

Kerbyson

2011

Proceedings of 2011 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis

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In this work we present a performance evaluation of the POWER7-IH processor and of integrated systems built from it. We describe the architecture of P7-IH with an emphasis on those characteristics that have a direct impact on the performance for large-scale HPC systems and applications. An important area of emphasis is the memory and communication subsystems and their impact on achievable application performance. The results from a set of micro-benchmarks are presented that include memory, communication and OS-noise characteristics. In addition the results from several production level applications are analyzed and their performance linked to the results of the micro-benchmarks through the use of accurate performance models. The models will also be employed in exploring the achievable performance of these applications on much larger systems.

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“…A similar study was applied to select the combined threshold th = 10 in ECtN. Interestingly, larger routers (such as the 48-port Aries [5] or the 56-port Torrent [25]) enlarge the range of threshold values that do not compromise neither adversarial traffic latency nor uniform traffic throughput.…”

Section: A Misrouting Threshold Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contention-Based Nonminimal Adaptive Routing in High-Radix Networks

Fuentes

Vallejo

García

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium

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Abstract-Adaptive routing is an efficient congestion avoidance mechanism for modern Datacenter and HPC networks. Congestion detection traditionally relies on the occupancy of the router queues. However, this approach can hinder performance due to coarse-grain measurements with small buffers, and potential routing oscillations with large buffers.We introduce an alternative mechanism, labelled ContentionBased Adaptive Routing. Our mechanism adapts routing based on an estimation of "network contention", the simultaneity of traffic flows contending for a network port. Our system employs a set of counters which track the demand for each output port. This exploits path diversity thanks to earlier detection of adversarial traffic patterns, and decouples buffer size and queue occupancy from contention detection.We evaluate our mechanism in a Dragonfly network. Our evaluations show this mechanism achieves optimal latency under uniform traffic and similar to best previous routing mechanisms under adversarial patterns, with immediate adaptation to traffic pattern changes.

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The IBM POWER7 HUB module: A terabyte interconnect switch for high-performance computer systems

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Efficient Routing Mechanisms for Dragonfly Networks

Efficient Routing Mechanisms for Dragonfly Networks

An early performance analysis of POWER7-IH HPC systems

Contention-Based Nonminimal Adaptive Routing in High-Radix Networks

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