The current revised estimate for the two-week period when ESP projects will have acces to the full Mira for testing codes at scale (ESV period), is the last half of August, possibly starting around August 20. Please plan for this. (I still haven’t heard from most of the ESP projects who their 1 or 2 ESV users will be. Please email [email protected] with this information.

[Update 10/3/2012: As indicated in a couple of mass emailings to ESP project participants, the plan changed and there will be no specific 2-week ESV period. We have accepted 24 of the 48 racks, and access will be extended starting the week of Oct. 7 to all ESP project participants to run science on those 24 racks.]

So far, I’ve only heard back from 3 projects about the one or two people designated to get access to Mira during the ESV window. Please think it over and send me ([email protected]) the names of those for your project.

Here’s a snip from the email of June 4:

There will be a two-week period (called the Early Science Verification – ESV), prior to the Mira acceptance-test period, when the Early Science codes can be run on the system. Their running correctly is a prerequisite for starting the acceptance testing (assuming the problem is with the system, and not the code or input decks). The ESV is an important milestone for the Early Science Program, the ALCF, and IBM. Please be prepared to exercise your application at scale—ideally running problems comparable with your planned production runs during the Early Science period. This is also a good opportunity for you to get your first multi-rack testing on Mira done.

Our best estimate for the intended start of acceptance testing is mid August, which places the ESV in the first two weeks of August. We expect to have the login/compile servers ready for your access at least one week prior. Please prepare your codes, and plan for members of your teams to run these tests. Only 1 or 2 key people from each project will have access to Mira in this period, so please identify those people in advance.

Current estimate is that ESV will start later—second half of August or after.

The agendas from the March and April ESP “Code for Q” workshops contain hyperlinks to the slides from the presentations. You can find the agendas here:

• April ESP “Code for Q” Workshop
• March ESP “Code for Q” Workshop

The April ESP “Code for Q” workshop will be held April 30 – May 2, 2012.

If you plan to attend, please register using instructions emailed to you (if you lost or didn’t receive instructions, email [email protected] or [email protected] and we’ll send them to you). Registration deadlines:

April 16 – Non US citizens (who are not ANL employees)
April 23 – US citizens and ANL employees

This workshop will start at 1:00 pm on Monday 30 April, with a full afternoon of formal presentations about Blue Gene/Q hardware and software, and our Very Early Access System 1-rack Blue Gene/Q machine you’ll have access to. Tuesday and Wednesday May 1-2 will be all-day hands-on sessions, with mini-presentations by some tools and libraries teams about their efforts on BG/Q and how to use their software on VEAS if available. Developers from these tools and libraries teams will be available to help you use their software, and ALCF staff will be on hand to help you get your code ported and running on VEAS.

Developers from the Early Science projects (and Tools & Libraries project) are eligible for accounts on the ALCF’s new one-rack BG/Q system, in its current form as the Very Early Access System (VEAS). If you would like to get access, please email [email protected] or follow the new instructions for requesting the VEAS resource.. The VEAS is currently living on the test & development rack named cetus.

(The system software and compilers on the VEAS are pre-production. There have been, are, and will continue to be glitches, unplanned downtimes, and software updates. In exchange for early access, you must agree to be tolerant of this environment.)

The ESP March 2012 Workshop, “Code for Q,” was held at the ALCF. We had 57 attendees, with representatives from 13 of the 16 ESP projects and several teams under the Tools and Libraries project. After an afternoon of formal presentations on Monday March 19th, we had two days of mostly hands-on work. By the end of the workshop, several ESP scientific applications and several tools/libraries packages were running on our one-rack BG/Q system, the VEAS (Very Early Access System).

If you plan to attend the March ESP workshop, please register using instructions emailed to you (if you lost or didn’t receive instructions email [email protected] or [email protected] and we’ll send them to you). Registration deadlines:

• March 5 – Non US citizens (who are not ANL employees)
• March 12 – US citizens and ANL employees

If you are a non-US citizen and not an Argonne employee, the registration deadline has passed. You should consider coming to the 2nd workshop, whose dates are now set as April 30 – May 2.

As discussed in a recent email to ESP investigators, the ALCF is planning a couple of workshops for the Early Science Program. The first was tentatively scheduled for March 5-7, but because of a conflict in our conference center is being rescheduled for March 19-21.

These are meant to be primarily technical, hands-on workshops for informal sharing of information and expertise; ALCF staff will help to get your code better target to Blue Gene/Q. By the time of the first workshop, we should all have access to the new test & development machine (a one-rack system that is currently being built at the ALCF). A practical goal of the workshops it getting your codes built and running on the T&D system. The 2nd workshop is planned for April–dates TBA.

Last night, IBM made a big announcement about Blue Gene/Q on the exhibit floor at SC11 in Seattle. Today, they are presenting a couple of papers and otherwise publicizing BG/Q. This means the lifting of the nondisclosure requirement for details of BG/Q hardware, software, and performance. I will be giving a presentation at the Argonne booth at SC on Wednesday at 11:30, which will discuss preparing applications for Mira. This will include some early performance numbers from the various ESP projects, and performance numbers for codes used as part of our contract with IBM—many of which are used by ESP projects. I’ll put those slides online at the ESP website (http://esp.alcf.anl.gov) tonight or tomorrow morning.

ESP project investigators should just have received an email containing slides from two presentations IBM gave about Blue Gene/Q technologies this summer—at the Hot Chips and Hot Interconnects Symposiums. IBM’s permission for us to discuss these liberates some useful technical information from NDA restrictions.