Presentation slides (Fellinger and Seager)
Abstract
There are many challenges that must be faced in creating an architecture of compute clusters that can perform at multiple petaflops and beyond to exascale. One of these is certainly the design of an I/O and storage infrastructure that can maintain a balance between processing and data migration. Developing a traditional workflow including checkpoints for simulations will mean an unprecedented increment in I/O bandwidth over existing technologies and designing a storage system that can contain and deliver the product of the computation in an organized file system will be a key factor in enabling these large clusters. Potential enabling technologies will be discussed which could achieve dynamic scaling in both I/O bandwidth and data distribution. Concepts will also be presented that could allow the distribution elements to act upon the data to simplify postprocessing requirements and scientific collaboration. These technologies, if effected, would help to establish a much closer tie between computation and storage resources decreasing the latency to data assimilation and analysis.
About the speaker
Dave Fellinger is the Chief Technical Officer [CTO] at DataDirect Networks, Inc., the world's leading provider of networked storage and cluster solutions for high performance computing environments and requirements - and one of the key architects of the DataDirect Networks’ Silicon Storage Appliance (S2A) storage controller technology. Dave has over thirty years of experience in engineering including film systems, ASIC design and development, GaAs semiconductor manufacture, RAID and storage systems, and video processing devices. His experience includes serving as Vice President of Engineering for Ultimatte Corporation, where his products won several awards including an Oscar and an Emmy. Dave attended Carnegie-Mellon University (Electrical Engineering and Physics and holds numerous patents in electrical engineering, optics, motion control, video processing, and pattern recognition.