HPC for the next generation of scientists - but not for beginners

摘要

Today's high-end computers are not easy to use: they have tens of thousands to millions of cores, and the architectures of both of the individual processors and the entire system are complex. Achieving top performance on these systems can be quite difficult. Furthermore, every three to five years, HPC architectures change enough that different optimisations or approaches might be needed in order to use the new systems efficiently. But the characteristics of high-end computer systems are by no means the only source of difficulty. The scientific problems that are tackled on such systems are typically quite complex, and are often at the leading edge of the scientific or engineering domain. Consequently, CS&E projects are usually carried out by teams with several to as many as dozens of researchers who have expertise in different aspects of the science, mathematical models, numerical algorithms, performance optimisation, visualisation, and programming models and languages. Developing software with a large team instead of one or a few collaborators brings its own challenges and need for expertise in software engineering, which also needs to be included in the team.