The CC – GRID? Era
Infinite processing, storage,
and bandwidth
@ zero cost and latency
Gordon Bell
(gbell@microsoft.com)
Bay Area Research Center
Microsoft Corporation
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
deja’ vu
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ARPAnet: c1969
–
–
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To use remote programs & data
Got FTP & mail. Machines & people overloaded.
NREN: c1988
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–
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BW => Faster FTP for images, data
Latency => Got http://www…
Tomorrow => Gbit communication BW, latency
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<’90 Mainframes, minis, PCs/WSs
>’90 very large, dep’t, & personal clusters
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VAX: c1979 one computer/scientist
Beowulf: c1995 one computer/scientist
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1960s batch: opti-use allocate, schedule,$
2000s
GRID: opti-use allocate,
schedule,
$
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters
& Grids
(… security, management, etc.)
Some observations
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Clusters are purchased, managed, and used
as a single, one room facility.
Clusters are the “new” computers. They
present unique, interesting, and critical
problems… then Grids can exploit them.
Clusters & Grids have little to do with one
another… Grids use clusters!
Clusters should be a good simulation of
tomorrow’s Grid.
Distributed PCs: Grids or Clusters?
Perhaps some clusterable problems can be
solved on a Grid… but it’s unlikely.
– Lack
of understanding clusters & variants
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
–
Socio-, political, eco- wrt to Grid.
Some observations

GRID was/is an exciting concept …
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–
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They can/must work within a community,
organization, or project. What binds it?
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Taxonomy… interesting vs necessity
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Cycle scavenging and object evaluation
(e.g. seti@home, QCD)
File distribution/sharing aka IP theft
(e.g. Napster, Gnutella)
Databases &/or programs and experiments
(astronomy, genome, NCAR, CERN)
Workbenches: web workflow chem, bio…
Single, large problem pipeline… e.g. NASA.
Exchanges… many sites operating together
Transparent web access aka load balancing
Facilities
managed PCs operating
as cluster!
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters
& Grids
Grids: Why?
The problem or community
dictates a Grid
 Economics… thief or scavenger
 Research funding… that’s where
the problems are

Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
In a 5-10 years we can/will have:
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more powerful personal computers
– processing 10-100x; multiprocessors-on-a-chip
–
–
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adequate networking? PCs now operate at 1 Gbps
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4x resolution (2K x 2K) displays to impact paper
Large, wall-sized and watch-sized displays
low cost, storage of one terabyte for personal use
ubiquitous access = today’s fast LANs
Competitive wireless networking
One chip, networked platforms e.g. light bulbs,
cameras
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Some well-defined platforms that compete with the PC
for mind (time) and market share
watch, pocket, body implant, home (media, set-top)
Inevitable, continued cyberization… the challenge…
interfacing platforms and people.
SNAP
… c1995
Scalable Network And Platforms
A View of Computing in 2000+
We all missed the impact of WWW!
Platform
Gordon Bell
Copyright Gordon Bell
Network
Jim Gray
Clusters & Grids
How Will Future Computers Be Built?
Thesis: SNAP: Scalable Networks and Platforms
• Upsize from desktop to world-scale computer
• based on a few standard components
Platform
Network
Because:
• Moore’s law:
exponential progress
• Standardization & Commoditization
• Stratification and competition
When: Sooner than you think!
• Massive standardization gives massive use
• Economic forces are enormous
p
e
r
f
o
r
m
a
n
c
e
Volume drives simple,
cost to standard
price for
platforms Stand-alone
Desk tops
high speed
interconnect
Distributed
workstations
PCs
Clustered
Computers
1-4 processor mP
MPPs
1-20 processor mP
price
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
Computing
SNAP
built entirely
from PCs
Wide-area
global
network
Mobile
Nets
Wide & Local
Area Networks
for: terminal,
PC, workstation,
& servers
Person
Person
servers
servers
(PCs)
(PCs)
???
TC=TV+PC
home ...
(CATV or ATM
or satellite)
Portables
Legacy
mainframes &
Legacy
minicomputers
mainframe
& terms
servers &
minicomputer
servers & terminals
scalable computers
built from PCs
Centralized
&Centralized
departmental
uni& mP servers
&
departmental
(UNIX
& NT)
servers
buit
from
PCs
A space, time
(bandwidth), &
generation scalable
environment
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
SNAP Architecture----------
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
GB plumbing from the baroque:
evolving from the 2 dance-hall model
Mp — S — Pc
:
|
:
|——————-- S.fiber ch. — Ms
|
:
|— S.Cluster
|— S.WAN —
vs,
MpPcMs — S.Lan/Cluster/Wan —
:
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
Modern scalable switches …
also hide a supercomputer
Scale from <1 to 120 Tbps
 1 Gbps ethernet switches scale to
10s of Gbps, scaling upward
 SP2 scales from 1.2
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Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
Interesting “cluster” in a cabinet
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366 servers per 44U cabinet
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Single processor
2 - 30 GB/computer (24 TBytes)
2 - 100 Mbps Ethernets
~10x perf*, power, disk, I/O per cabinet
~3x price/perf
Network services… Linux based
*42, 2 processors, 84 Ethernet, 3 TBytes
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
ISTORE Hardware Vision
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System-on-a-chip enables computer, memory,
without significantly increasing size of disk
5-7 year target:
MicroDrive:1.7” x 1.4” x 0.2”
2006: ?
1999: 340 MB, 5400 RPM,
5 MB/s, 15 ms seek
2006: 9 GB, 50 MB/s ? (1.6X/yr capacity,
1.4X/yr BW)
Integrated IRAM processor
2x height
Connected via crossbar switch
growing like Moore’s law
16 Mbytes; ; 1.6 Gflops; 6.4 Gops
10,000+ nodes in one rack! 100/board = 1
TB; 0.16 Tf
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
The Disk Farm? or
a System On a Card?
14"
The 500GB disc card
An array of discs
Can be used as
100 discs
1 striped disc
50 FT discs
....etc
LOTS of accesses/second
of bandwidth
A few disks are replaced by 10s of Gbytes
of RAM
and a processor to run
Apps!!
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters
& Grids
The virtuous cycle of bandwidth
supply and demand
Increased
Demand
Increase Capacity
(circuits & bw)
Standards
Create new
service
Telnet & FTP
EMAIL
Lower
response time
WWW
Audio
Voice!
Video
Redmond/Seattle,
Map
of GrayWABell Prize results
single-thread single-stream tcp/ip
New York
via 7 hops
desktop-to-desktop …Win 2K
out of the box performance*
Arlington, VA
San Francisco,
CA
5626 km
10 hops
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
The Promise of SAN/VIA:10x in 2 years
http://www.ViArch.org/
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Yesterday:
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10 MBps (100 Mbps Ethernet)
~20 MBps tcp/ip saturates
2 cpus
round-trip latency ~250 µs
Now
–
250
Time µs to
Send 1KB
200
150
Transmit
receivercpu
sender cpu
100
Wires are 10x faster
Myrinet, Gbps Ethernet, ServerNet,…
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Fast user-level
communication
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tcp/ip ~ 100 MBps 10% cpu
round-trip latency is 15 us
1.6 Gbps
demoed
Copyright
Gordon Bellon a WAN
50
0
100Mbps
Gbps
SAN
Clusters & Grids
1st, 2nd, 3rd, or New Paradigm for science?
Labscape
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
Labscape
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids
Courtesy of Dr. Thomas Sterling, Caltech
Lessons from Beowulf
An experiment in parallel computing systems
 Established vision- low cost high end computing
 Demonstrated effectiveness of PC clusters for
some (not all) classes of applications
 Provided networking software
 Provided cluster management tools
 Conveyed findings to broad community
 Tutorials and the book
 Provided design standard to rally community!*
 Standards beget: books, trained people, software
… virtuous cycle*
*observations
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Courtesy, Thomas Sterling, Caltech.
The End
How can GRIDs become a
non- ad hoc computer
structure?
Get yourself an application
community!
Copyright Gordon Bell
Clusters & Grids