SC19 Proceedings

The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis

An Early Evaluation of Intel’s Optane DC Persistent Memory Module and Its Impact on High-Performance Scientific Applications


Authors: Michèle Weiland (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre), Holger Brunst (Technical University Dresden), Tiago Quintino (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), Nick Johnson (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre), Olivier Iffrig (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), Simon Smart (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), Christian Herold (Technical University Dresden), Antonino Bonanni (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts), Adrian Jackson (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre), Mark Parsons (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre)

Abstract: Memory and I/O performance bottlenecks in supercomputing simulations are two key challenges that must be addressed on the road to Exascale. The new byte-addressable persistent non-volatile memory technology from Intel, DCPMM, promises to be an exciting opportunity to break with the status quo, with unprecedented levels of capacity at near-DRAM speeds. Here, we explore the potential of DCPMM in the context of two high-performance scientific applications in terms of outright performance, efficiency and usability for both its Memory and App Direct modes. In Memory mode, we show equivalent performance and better efficiency for a CASTEP simulation that is limited by memory capacity on conventional DRAM-only systems without any changes to the application. For IFS, we demonstrate that a distributed object-store over NVRAM reduces the data contention created in weather forecasting data producer-consumer workflows. In addition, we also present the achievable memory bandwidth performance using STREAM.


Presentation: file


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