Interdisciplinary Instrumentation Colloquium

Nick Wright (LBNL): Quantitative methods for procuring supercomputers at NERSC – what can we learn from instrumentation?

Name: Nick Wright (LBNL): Quantitative methods for procuring supercomputers at NERSC – what can we learn from instrumentation?
Start: 2021-02-24T12:00:00-08:00
End: 2021-02-24T13:00:00-08:00
Location: No location set

Wednesday 24 Feb 2021, 12:00 → 13:00 US/Pacific

Description

zoom link https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/97341258188

Abstract:

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) center is the production High Performance Computing (HPC) center for the Office of Science in the US Dept of Energy. NERSC purchases and deploys HPC infrastructure to enable its more than 7,000 users to perform basic research across a wide range of disciplines. In this talk, I will describe the process by which NERSC purchases supercomputers, with a focus upon the Perlmutter machine which will be delivered to NERSC/LBNL in 2021. I will describe our research efforts to instrument our current HPC resources that are targeted at gaining a deeper understanding of the ways in which NERSC is used today. I will also describe current technology trends and how they might impact the upcoming NERSC-10 & NERSC-11 procurements.

Short bio:

Nicholas J. Wright is the chief architect and the advanced technologies group lead at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) center. He led the effort to optimize the architecture of the Perlmutter machine, the first NERSC platform designed to meet needs of both large-scale simulation and data analysis from experimental facilities. His research interests are in performance analysis of HPC applications and architectures. He has published more than 40 papers in these areas and has been PI on various DOE funded research projects. He holds a BSc in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in computational Chemistry, both from the University of Durham, England.