Title: Operating Systems for Capability Supercomputers (2009 CSRI Summer Lecture Series)

Speaker: Kevin Pedretti, Sandia National Laboratories

Date/Time: Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 3-4pm (MST)     

Location: CSRI Building, Room 90 (Sandia NM), 915/S145 (CA)

Brief Abstract: Capability supercomputers have unique system software requirements due to their massive scale and complexity.  This talk will provide an overview of the issues and our approach for addressing them.  The case will be made that general-purpose operating systems, even slimmed down ones, are a poor match for this environment as they employ inappropriate resource management policies and add unnecessary complexity.

Furthermore, they have grown so complicated over the years that they significantly impede the innovation that is necessary to take full-advantage of future architectures.  A new lightweight kernel operating system, called Kitten, will be presented that is designed specifically for the capability environment.  We are leveraging the simplicity of the lightweight kernel environment to investigate optimizations for multi-core processors and techniques for utilizing the hardware virtualization capabilities in most new processors.  Results in both of these areas will be presented.

CSRI POC: Zhaofang Wen (505) 284-0206