Dr. Markus Fischer

Dr. rer. nat. Dipl. Inf.
HPC Consultant
CV

• Sockets Direct on System Area Networks: Fast Sockets, SAN Sockets, Cluster Sockets
• This pluggable layer will map distributed socket applications to a system area network. The binary compatibility will enhance existing applications to fully exploit System Area Network performance. SAN Sockets enable unmodified exisiting applications to benefit directly from System Area Networks, like for example Myrinet. There is no need to recompile/link your application and distributed applications (like databases etc) will work out of the box . Click here or here for some very extraordinary results.
  The graphs show the performance gain when mapping an application (unmodified binary) to Myrinet.

  Further results of microbenchmarks (IPERF, TTCP, Netpipe, Netperf) can be found here . They include a comparison with Gigabit Ethernet .

  Using latest hardware, the achieved latency is sub 6 usec and bandwidth has been measured to be as high as 495 MByte/s.


Available platforms are Windows NT/2000, Linux and Solaris. The implementation has been carried out as Winsock Direct, Layered Service Provider, shared library and Linux Kernel Module.

An updated presentation can be found at the Myrinet Users Group Meeting 2002, Vienna Presentation Slides MUG2002

Besides an improvement in the order of a magnitude for latency and bandwith, the benefits are less CPU load since the TCP/IP overhead which comes in numerous ways is simply eliminated. This results in a performance of > 3.8Gbit/s with 8% CPU load (measurement using netperf).
Applications which will benefit from Sockets Direct will be distributed applications using sockets (e.g: parallel databases) but also DCOM or Corba applications.

• Heterogeneous Load Balancing
• e.g. Performance Prediction, Application leveled Scheduling, Networking Performance
• UNIX and WIN32, Interoperability and Software Migration
• WINRSHD : A Remote Execution Facility to Harness and Control Remote Windows(TM) Resources (includes Secure Remote Shell Daemon / Service for WIN32 )
• Using the WIN32 Architecture as a Platform for Cluster Computing
• Winsock Direct for Myrinet (also implemented as LSP) - transparently making use of SAN communiction while keeping socket semantics
• PVM Team member: Developer / Supporter of the 'official' PVM on WIN32: PVM 3.4.4.exe New Update! (03/22/2002)
• Message Passing using high speed interconnects


• Plug Ins for the SAN-PVM project:
  • PVM-SCI
  • PVM-GM (Myrinet)
  • PVM-SCore/PM (Myrinet). This is available through the SCore Cluster Operating System from RWCP .
• Conferences
  • Organizer BOF SC99 on High Speed Interconnects for Cluster Computing. Here are the PRESENTATIONS
  • PCM Asia-Pacific Symposium on Cluster Computing (APSCC'2000)
    in conjunction with HPCAsia2000
  • Organizer Tutorial at the SC2000
    • Talks available

    • Available: The famous two slides from Gene Amdahl's Keynote ( 1 - on speed increase, 2 - on quantum computers )

  • Myrinet Users Group (MUG2000) Conference in Lyon, September 2000.
  • Organizer BOF at SC2000 on High Speed Interconnects
• PCM Euro-Par 2001
• 2nd Myrinet Users Group Meeting in Vienna, Austria, May 2002
• PCM CCGrid 2003, Tokyo, Japan
• PCM Cluster 2004, San Diego, CA, USA

For getting more information browse the left frame.