(upbeat music)
>> We are back,
approaching the finish line here at Supercomputing 22,
our last interview of the day,
our last interview of the show.
And I have to say Dave Nicholson, my co-host,
My name is Paul Gillin.
I've been attending trade shows for 40 years Dave,
I've never been to one like this.
The type of people who are here,
the type of problems they're solving,
what they talk about,
the trade shows are typically,
they're so speeds and feeds.
They're so financial, they're so ROI,
they all sound the same after a while.
This is truly a different event.
Do you get that sense?
>> A hundred percent.
Now, I've been attending trade shows
for 10 years since I was 19, in other words,
so I don't have necessarily your depth.
No, but seriously, Paul,
totally, completely, completely different
than any other conference.
First of all,
there's the absolute allure
of looking at the latest and greatest, coolest stuff.
I mean, when you have NASA lecturing on things
when you have Lawrence Livermore Labs
that we're going to be talking to here in a second
it's a completely different story.
You have all of the academics
you have students who are in competition
and also interviewing with organizations.
It's phenomenal.
I've had chills a lot this week.
>> And I guess our last two guests
sort of represent that cross section.
Armando Acosta, director of HPC Solutions,
High Performance Solutions at Dell.
And Matt Leininger,
who is the HPC Strategist
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Now, there is perhaps,
I don't know you can correct me on this,
but perhaps no institution in the world
that uses more computing cycles
than Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
and is always on the leading edge
of what's going on in Supercomputing.
And so we want to talk to both of you about that.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us today.
>> Sure, glad to be here.
>> For having us.
>> Let's start with you, Armando.
Well, let's talk
about the juxtaposition of the two of you.
I would not have thought of LLNL
as being a Dell reference account in the past.
Tell us about the background of your relationship
and what you're providing to the laboratory.
>> Yeah, so we're really excited
to be working with Lawrence Livermore, working with Matt.
But actually this process started about two years ago.
So we started looking
at essentially what was coming down the pipeline.
You know, what were the customer requirements.
What did we need in order to make Matt successful.
And so the beauty of this project
is that we've been talking about this for two years,
and now it's finally coming to fruition.
And now we're actually delivering systems
and delivering racks of systems.
But what I really appreciate
is Matt coming to us,
us working together for two years
and really trying to understand what are the requirements,
what's the schedule,
what do we need to hit in order to make them successful
>> At Lawrence Livermore,
what drives your computing requirements I guess?
You're working on some very, very big problems
but a lot of very complex problems.
How do you decide what you need to procure to address them?
>> Well, that's a difficult challenge.
I mean, our mission is a national security mission
dealing with making sure
that we do our part
to provide the high performance computing capabilities
to the US Department of Energy's
National Nuclear Security Administration.
We do that
through the Advanced Simulation computing program.
Its goal is to provide that computing power
to make sure that the US nuclear rep of the stockpile
is safe, secure, and effective.
So how we go about doing that?
There's a lot of work involved.
We have multiple platform lines
that we accomplish that goal with.
One of them is the advanced technology systems.
Those are the ones you've heard about a lot,
they're pushing towards exit scale,
the GPU technologies incorporated into those.
We also have a second line, a platform line,
called the Commodity Technology Systems.
That's where right now we're partnering with Dell
on the latest generation of those.
Those systems are a little more conservative,
they're right now CPU only driven
but they're also intended to be the everyday work horses.
So those are the first systems our users get on.
It's very easy for them
to get their applications up and running.
They're the first things they use
usually on a day to day basis.
They run a lot of small to medium size jobs
that you need to do
to figure out how to most effectively use
what workloads you need to move to the even larger systems
to accomplish our mission goals.
>> The workhorses.
>> Yeah.
>> What have you seen here these last few days of the show,
what excites you?
What are the most interesting things you've seen?
>> There's all kinds of things that are interesting.
Probably most interesting ones
I can't talk about in public, unfortunately,
'cause of NDA agreements, of course.
But it's always exciting to be here at Supercomputing.
It's always exciting to see the products
that we've been working with industry
and co-designing with them on
for, you know, several years
before the public actually sees them.
That's always an exciting part of the conference as well
specifically with CTS-2, it's exciting.
As was mentioned before,
I've been working with Dell
for nearly two years on this,
but the systems first started being delivered
this past August.
And so we're just taking the initial deliveries of those.
We've deployed, you know, roughly about 1600 nodes now
but that'll ramp up to over 6,000 nodes
over the next three or four months.
>> So how does this work
intersect with Sandia and Los Alamos?
Explain to us the relationship there.
>> Right, so those three laboratories
are the laboratories
under the National Nuclear Security Administration.
We partner together on CTS.
So the architectures, as you were asking,
how do we define these things,
it's the labs coming together.
Those three laboratories
we define what we need for that architecture.
We have a joint procurement
that is run out of Livermore
but then the systems are deployed at all three laboratories.
And then they serve the programs that I mentioned
for each laboratory as well.
>> I've worked in this space for a very long time
you know I've worked with agencies
where the closest I got to anything
they were actually doing
was the sort of guest suite outside the secure area.
And sometimes there are challenges
when you're communicating,
it's like you have a partner like Dell
who has all of these things to offer,
all of these ideas.
You have requirements,
but maybe you can't share 100% of what you need to do.
How do you navigate that?
Who makes the decision
about what can be revealed in these conversations?
You talk about NDA in terms of what's been shared with you,
you may be limited
in terms of what you can share with vendors.
Does that cause inefficiency?
>> To some degree.
I mean, we do a good job within the NSA
of understanding what our applications need
and then mapping that
to technical requirements
that we can talk about with vendors.
We also have kind of in between that
we've done this for many years.
A recent example is of course
with the exit scale computing program
and some things it's doing creating proxy apps
or mini apps that are smaller versions
of some of the things that we are important to us.
Some application areas are important to us,
hydrodynamics, material science, things like that.
And so we can collaborate with vendors on those proxy apps
to co-design systems and tweak the architectures.
In fact, we've done a little bit that with CTS-2,
not as much in CTS as maybe in the ATS platforms
but that kind of general idea
of how we collaborate
through these proxy applications
is something we've used across platforms.
>> Now is Dell one of your co-design partners?
>> In CTS-2 absolutely, yep.
>> And how, what aspects of CTS-2
are you working on with Dell?
>> Well, the architecture itself
was the first, you know thing we worked with them on,
we had a procurement come out,
you know they bid an architecture on that.
We had worked with them,
you know but previously on our requirements,
understanding what our requirements are.
But that architecture today
is based on the fourth generation Intel Xeon
that you've heard a lot about at the conference.
We are one of the first customers
to get those systems in.
All the systems are interconnected together
with the Cornell Network's Omni-Path Network
that we've used before
and are very excited about as well.
And we build up from there.
The systems get integrated in
by the operations teams at the laboratory.
They get integrated
into our production computing environment.
Dell is really responsible, you know
for designing these systems
and delivering to the laboratories.
The laboratories then work with Dell.
We have a software stack
that we provide on top of that
called TOSS, for Tri-Lab Operating System.
It's based on Redhead Enterprise Linux.
But the goal there is that it allows us,
a common user environment,
a common simulation environment
across not only CTS-2,
but maybe older systems we have
and even the larger systems that we'll be deploying as well.
So from a user perspective
they see a common user interface,
a common environment across all the different platforms
that they use at Livermore and the other laboratories.
>> And Armando,
what does Dell get out of the co-design arrangement
with the lab?
>> Well, we get to make sure that they're successful.
But the other big thing that we want to do,
is typically when you think about Dell and HPC,
a lot of people don't make that connection together.
And so what we're trying to do is make sure
that, you know they know that,
hey, whether you're a work group customer
at the smallest end
or a super computer customer at the highest end,
Dell wants to make sure
that we have the right setup portfolio
to match any needs across this.
But what we were really excited about this,
this is kind of our, you know
big CTS-2 first thing we've done together.
And so, you know, hopefully this has been successful.
We've made Matt happy
and we look forward to the future
what we can do with bigger and bigger things.
>> So will the labs be okay
with Dell coming up with a marketing campaign
that said something like,
"We can't confirm
that alien technology is being reverse engineered."
>> Yeah, that would fly.
>> I mean that would be right, right?
And I have to ask you the question directly
and the way you can answer it
is by smiling like you're thinking,
what a stupid question.
Are you reverse engineering alien technology at the labs?
>> Yeah, you'd have to suck the PR office.
>> Okay, okay.
(all laughing)
>> Good answer.
>> No, but it is fascinating
because to a degree
it's like you could say, yeah, we're working together
but if you really want to dig into it, it's like,
"Well I kind of can't tell you exactly
how some of this stuff is."
Do you consider anything that you do
from a technology perspective,
not what you're doing with it,
but the actual stack,
do you try to design proprietary things into the stack
or do you say,
"No, no, no, we're going to go with standards
and then what we do with it is proprietary and secret."?
>> Yeah, it's more the latter.
>> Is the latter?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you're not going to try to reverse engineer the industry?
>> No, no.
We want the solutions that we develop
to enhance the industry
to be able to apply to a broader market
so that we can, you know, gain
from the volume of that market,
the lower cost that they would enable, right?
If we go off and develop more and more customized solutions
that can be extraordinarily expensive.
And so we we're really looking
to leverage the wider market,
but do what we can to influence that,
to develop key technologies
that we and others need
that can enable us in the high forms computing space.
>> We were talking with Satish Iyer from Dell earlier
about validated designs,
Dell's reference designs for for pharma
and for manufacturing,
in HPC are you seeing that HPC, Armando,
and is coming together traditionally
and more of an academic research discipline
beginning to come together with commercial applications?
And are these two markets beginning to blend?
>> Yeah, I mean so here's what's happening,
is you have this convergence
of HPC, AI and data analytics.
And so when you have that combination
of those three workloads
they're applicable across many vertical markets, right?
Whether it's financial services,
whether it's life science, government and research.
But what's interesting,
and Matt won't brag about,
but a lot of stuff that happens in the DoE labs
trickles down to the enterprise space,
trickles down to the commercial space
because these guys know how to do it at scale,
they know how to do it efficiently
and they know how to hit the mark.
And so a lot of customers say,
"Hey we want what CTS-2 does," right?
And so it's very interesting.
The way I love it is their process
the way they do the RFP process.
Matt talked about the benchmarks
and helping us understand,
hey here's kind of the mark you have to hit.
And then at the same time, you know
if we make them successful
then obviously it's better for all of us, right?
You know, I want to secure nuclear stock pile
so I hope everybody else does as well.
>> The software stack you mentioned,
I think Tia?
>> TOSS. >> TOSS.
>> Yeah.
>> How did that come about?
Why did you feel the need
to develop your own software stack?
>> It originated back, you know, even 20 years ago
when we first started building Linux clusters
when that was a crazy idea.
Livermore and other laboratories
were really the first to start doing that
and then push them to larger and larger scales.
And it was key to have Linux running on that at the time.
And so we had the.
>> So 20 years ago
you knew you wanted to run on Linux?
>> Was 20 years ago, yeah, yeah.
And we started doing that
but we needed a way to have a version of Linux
that we could partner with someone on
that would do, you know, the support,
you know, just like you get from an EoS vendor, right?
Security support and other things.
But then layer on top of that,
all the HPC stuff you need
either to run the system,
to set up the system,
to support our user base.
And that evolved into to TOSS
which is the Tri-Lab Operating System.
Now it's based on the latest version
of Redhead Enterprise Linux, as I mentioned before,
with all the other HPC magic, so to speak
and all that HPC magic is open source things.
It's not stuff,
it may be things that we develop
but it's nothing closed source.
So all that's there
we run it across all these different environments
as I mentioned before.
And it really originated back in the early days
of, you know, Beowulf clusters, Linux clusters,
as just needing something that we can use
to run on multiple systems
and start creating that common environment at Livermore
and then eventually the other laboratories.
>> How is a company like Dell,
able to benefit from the open source work
that's coming out of the labs?
>> Well, when you look at the open source,
I mean open source is good for everybody, right?
Because if you make a open source tool available
then people start essentially using that tool.
And so if we can make that open source tool more robust
and get more people using it,
it gets more enterprise ready.
And so with that, you know, we're all about open source
we're all about standards
and really about raising all boats
'cause that's what open source is all about.
>> And with that, we are out of time.
This is our 28th interview of SC22
and you're taking us out on a high note.
Armando Acosta, director of HPC Solutions at Dell.
Matt Leininger, HPC Strategist,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.
Great discussion.
Hopefully it was a good show for you.
Fascinating show for us
and thanks for being with us today.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you for having us
>> Dave it's been a pleasure.
>> Absolutely.
>> Hope we'll be back next year.
>> Can't believe, went by fast.
Absolutely at SC23.
>> We hope you'll be back next year.
This is Paul Gillin.
That's a wrap,
with Dave Nicholson for theCUBE.
See here in next time.
(soft upbear music)