The IBM RS/6000 SP system is one of the most cost-e ective commercially available high performance machines. IBM RS/6000 SP systems support the Message Passing Interface standard (MPI) and LAPI. LAPI is a low level, reliable and e cient one sided communication API library, implemented on IBM RS/6000 SP systems. This paper explains how the high performance of the LAPI library has been exploited in order to implement the MPI standard more e ciently than the existing MPI. It describes how to avoid unnecessary data copies at both the sending and receiving sides for such an implementation. The resolution of problems arising from the mismatches between the requirements of the MPI standard and the features of LAPI is discussed. As a result of this exercise, certain enhancements to LAPI are identi ed to enable an e cient implementation of MPI on LAPI. The performance of the new implementation of MPI is compared with that of the underlying LAPI itself. The latency (in polling and interrupt modes) and bandwidth of our new implementation is compared with that of the native MPI implementation on RS/6000 SP systems. The results indicate that the MPI implementation on LAPI performs comparably or better than the original MPI implementation in most cases. Improvements of up to 17:3% in polling mode latency, 35:8% in interrupt mode latency, and 20:9% in bandwidth are obtained for certain message sizes. The implementation of MPI on top of LAPI also outperforms the native MPI implementation for the NAS Parallel Benchmarks.
Software defined networking (SDN) represents a new approach in which the decision-making process of the network is moved from distributed network devices to a logically centralized controller, implemented as software running on commodity servers. This enables more automation and optimization of the network and, when combined with software defined compute and software defined storage, forms one of the three pillars of IBM's software defined environment (SDE). This paper provides an overview of SDN, focusing on several technologies gaining attention and the benefits they provide for cloud-computing providers and end-users. These technologies include (i) logically centralized SDN controllers to manage virtual and physical networks, (ii) new abstractions for virtual networks and network virtualization, and (iii) new routing algorithms that eliminate limitations of traditional Ethernet routing and allow newer network topologies. Additionally, we present IBM's vision for SDN, describing how these technologies work together to virtualize the underlying physical network infrastructure and automate resource provisioning. The vision includes automated provisioning of multi-tier applications, application performance monitoring, and the enabling of dynamic adaptation of network resources to application workloads. Finally, we explore the implications of SDN on network topologies, quality of service, and middleboxes (e.g., network appliances).
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