Middleware in Modern High Performance Computing System Architectures

A recent trend in modern high performance computing (HPC) system architectures employs “lean” compute nodes running a lightweight operating system (OS). Certain parts of the OS as well as other system software services are moved to service nodes in order to increase performance and scalability. This paper examines the impact of this HPC system architecture trend on HPC “middleware” software solutions, which traditionally equip HPC systems with advanced features, such as parallel and distributed programming models, appropriate system resource management mechanisms, remote application steering and user interaction techniques. Since the approach of keeping the compute node software stack small and simple is orthogonal to the middleware concept of adding missing OS features between OS and application, the role and architecture of middleware in modern HPC systems needs to be revisited. The result is a paradigm shift in HPC middleware design, where single middleware services are moved to service nodes, while runtime environments (RTEs) continue to reside on compute nodes.