benchmarking porting costs of the skynet high … of the skynet high performance signal processing...
TRANSCRIPT
Benchmarking Porting Costs of the SKYNET
High Performance Signal Processing Middleware
Michael J. Linnig and Gary R. SuderEngineering Fellows
Sept 12, 2014
Agenda• The Need for Speed … High Performance Parallel
Processing in Airborne Radar
• Overview of SKYNET Middleware Approach
• History of SKYNET Middleware
• Grid Based Computing with SKYNET
• Measuring Portability Costs
2
Motivation for Skynet Signal Processing Middleware
9/5/2014 3Multiple Processor Software Architecture Needed
Multiple simultaneous receive beams.
• Prodigious Data Rates • 100’s of millions of
samples per second from each receive beam
• Tens of gigabytes per second
• Need Many Tens of TeraFLOPS
Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) Programming Paradigm
• Decompose Computations
• Allocate to a Large Number of Processors Running in Parallel
• Each Processor Working On A Subset Of The Data
SKYNET Supports Multiple SPMD applications linked together
Each processor assigned a subset of the data
Assigned subset may be based on geographic
location, or other convenient scheme
Radar is an “Embarrassingly Parallel Problem”
Allows Hundreds of Processors to Be Netted Together
Users include Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and
five other companies
Parallel Array of Processors
RadarData
SKYNET MiddlewareA Portable Open Architecture for Massively Parallel Computing
• Solves an Embarrassingly Parallel Problem• Open Architecture based on FOSS Supercomputer Standards
– 10 years+ on Wide Area Surveillance Radars. – Nicknamed SKYNET with a nod to James Cameron
• Single Program Multiple Data (SPMD) Approach• Abstraction is a Rectangular Grid of processors
– Based on decades of high-performance computing experience– Grid abstraction is inherently scalable to a variable number of processors– Supports compute power needed for Radar
History of Skynet Signal Processing Middleware
• The originally on an Array Of Hundreds of COTS Digital Signal Processors
– Array Operating System (AOS) portion of the SKYNET middleware added grid-based inter-processor communication between applications.
• Modern Platforms– In 2003, Northrop Grumman Corporation revised
SKYNET middleware to use MPI protocol internally – Raytheon Optimized the SKYNET Middleware on Linux– Raytheon easily ported existing radar modes to an array
of Linux based COTS high performance processors by using the SKYNET Middleware.
9/5/2014 6Ported to six different architectures, including POWER™ and Intel
The SKYNET Middleware API isolates radar modes
from the details of the underlying Operating
System and Processor
Linux Open MPI
SKYNET Processor Middleware Approach• Embrace COTS Signal Processors
– Use Middleware to isolate radar applications– Built on Linux OS, to allow for easy migration to new processors
• Decomposed into two parts:– Government owned SKYNET MetaWare – a thin
supercomputing framework that decouples radar applications from operating system and hardware dependency.
– Open Middleware – A open compute environment, • based on Linux and open standards, • can be easily targeted to new hardware platforms.
• Uses Open Standards, Linux, DDS, POSIX
• Middleware Solution Features:– Entire software “stack” is either Government owned or open
standards– High Performance Computing needed for Wide Area
Surveillance
• Easy upgrades, multiple vendors of Linux processors
7SKYNET Enables Independent Procurement of Processor and Modes
• Uses Widely Used Open Standards
• No Proprietary Interfaces
Foundation of the SKYNET Middleware is Linux
The SKYNET Virtual Node Abstraction • Communicating Virtual Nodes
– Middleware provides an abstraction called a Virtual Node, that is layered upon the real-time OS abstraction and the Message Passing Interface abstraction.
– A Virtual Node is a task that is defined to have four NEWS neighbors (North, East, West and South, hence NEWS.).
• This approach allows efficient algorithms spanning hundreds of processors.
– The resulting radar mode software is largely independent of the number and the kind of processors.
• Middleware abstraction hides all detail of communication– Takes advantage of Multicore and Multiple CPU Processors– Natural growth path to using processors with hundreds of cores on a single
chip
Middleware Provides Operations that Operate Across Processor Boundaries Transparently
NEWS -- Cartesian Communication Optimized
Other SKYNET FunctionsSemaphores Queues
Mailboxes TimersMemory
ManagementTask
ManagementPeriodic Alarms Logging
Benchmarking Middleware Portability
• Two Operational Radar Modes ported to Eight Different Vendor Platforms
• Modes had to meet existing execution requirements
• Changes to Modes SW documented
9/5/2014 9Middleware Enabled Port of Modes to Most Platforms with no changes
Summary
• The SKYNET Middleware is an example Open Systems Architecture that allows rapid technology refresh
• A Signal Processing Middleware can be Open and Portable While Maintaining High Performance
9/5/2014 10A Signal Processing Middleware can be Portable and Efficient