[Beowulf] MPI application benchmarks

[Martin Siegert]

On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 02:15:56PM +0200, Toon Moene wrote:
> Martin Siegert wrote:
> >Hi,
> >
> >this is partially triggered by the mentioniong of the SPEC MPI2007
> >benchmark: what are people using as a benchmark suite for RFP purposes?
> 
> Our own code.

Sigh. I thought I could avoid that response. Our own code (due to the no.
of users who all believe that their code is the most important and
therefore must be benchmarked) is so massive that any potential RFP
respondent would have to work a year to run the code. Thus, we have to
find a sensible cross section that is respresentative of the applications
we care about. Since we will be purchasing several facilities with
different performance characteristics (which are somewhat flexible
depending on the price/performance ratio) we would like to setup a
benchmark suite that covers the whole spectrum.

> Anyone who does something different for serious RFP purposes is playing 
> with their lives (at least in our surroundings - civil servants are 
> heavily watched as far as fraud / or attempted fraud in these case go).

I believe we can handle that. I did not say that we wouldn't run, test,
modify/add applications for our own purposes. That's why we require
open source.

Since "own code" is the only answer that I appear to be getting, let me
rephrase the question: which applications do you include as "your own code"?
E.g., we will almost certainly include gromacs (which still leaves the
question of the input parameters, etc.).

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
Martin Siegert
Head, HPC at SFU
WestGrid Site Lead
Academic Computing Services                phone: (604) 291-4691
Simon Fraser University                    fax:   (604) 291-4242
Burnaby, British Columbia                  email: siegert at sfu.ca
Canada  V5A 1S6