Moving the code to the data - Dynamic code deployment using activespaces

Ciprian Docan, Manish Parashar, Julian Cummings, Scott Klasky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

Managing the large volumes of data produced by emerging scientific and engineering simulations running on leadership-class resources has become a critical challenge. The data has to be extracted off the computing nodes and transported to consumer nodes so that it can be processed, analyzed, visualized, archived, etc. Several recent research efforts have addressed data-related challenges at different levels. One attractive approach is to offload expensive I/O operations to a smaller set of dedicated computing nodes known as a staging area. However, even using this approach, the data still has to be moved from the staging area to consumer nodes for processing, which continues to be a bottleneck. In this paper, we investigate an alternate approach, namely moving the data-processing code to the staging area rather than moving the data. Specifically, we present the Active Spaces framework, which provides (1) programming support for defining the data-processing routines to be downloaded to the staging area, and (2) run-time mechanisms for transporting binary codes associated with these routines to the staging area, executing the routines on the nodes of the staging area, and returning the results. We also present an experimental performance evaluation of Active Spaces using applications running on the Cray XT5 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Finally, we use a coupled fusion application workflow to explore the trade-offs between transporting data and transporting the code required for data processing during coupling, and we characterize the sweet spots for each option.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 25th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2011
Pages758-769
Number of pages12
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011
Event25th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2011 - Anchorage, AK, United States
Duration: May 16 2011May 20 2011

Publication series

NameProceedings - 25th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2011

Conference

Conference25th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, IPDPS 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAnchorage, AK
Period05/16/1105/20/11

Keywords

  • coupled simulations
  • data-intensive application workflows
  • dynamic code deployment
  • in situ data processing

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