Peta-Scale Computing

In a few short years, computers capable of over one Petaflops performance will become a reality. The most likely approach for first successfully reaching this performance level will involve several thousands of parallel processing elements. What are the key considerations for building such systems? What are the software requirements and demands? How will applications scale? How reliable are they likely to be? What will they be good for? We will address these questions and more based on early experience with the BlueGene system. Biographical Sketch: Dr. Kronstadt was graduated from Brown University in 1967, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1973. He was T. H. Hildebrandt Assistant Professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan from 1973 to 1978, where he conducted research in the area of several complex variables and functional analysis. He joined the Computer Science department of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in 1978. From 1978 to 1983 he helped develop software and architectural extensions for the Yorktown Simulation Engine (YSE). In 1983, he joined the VLSI Systems group, and became manager of that group in June 1983. In that capacity he was involved in the design and specification of a number of high performance experimental RISC microprocessors, as well as the development of a standard cell design system. From 1986 to 1988 he was manager of the Microsystems, Analysis and Design Department with responsibility for experimental microprocessor design, advanced VLSI chip design, and circuit design and analysis tools. After an assignment to the Research Division Technical Planning Staff, he became manager of the RISC Systems Department in January, 1990. Subsequently he was named Director of Advanced RISC Systems in January, 1994, Director of Personal Systems Solutions in May, 1995. Responsibilities in these positions included, PowerPC based architecture, microprocessor design, compilers and operating systems, the IBM Anti-virus product, development of advanced handwriting recognition techniques and prototypes, development of MPEG encoding and decoding hardware and software, and the development of wireless and mobile computing environments. In 1996, Dr. Kronstadt became Director of VLSI Systems where his responsibilities continue to include development of the PowerPC architecture, research in microprocessor implementation and micro-architecture, as well as CAD development. Since 2004, he has been Director of Exploratory Server Systems and the Director of the Deep Computing Institute, with responsibility for advanced operating systems research, highly performance computing architectures including BlueGene, and emerging high performance applications including computational biology. Dr. Kronstadt is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and was awarded two IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement awards for his work on the YSE software. He holds three patents in microprocessor design, and is a Fellow of the IEEE. Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS’05) 1530-2075/05 $ 20.00 IEEE