OptoHPC‐Sim

Network simulator for performance evaluation and analysis of next generation optoelectronic HPC Network Systems

The OptoHPC‐Sim simulator has been developed by members of WinPhoS research group in order to study the HPC network system performance when employing state‐of-the‐art specifications of electro‐optical board and router chip modules. OptoHPC‐Sim supports the utilization of optical interconnect and electro‐optical routing technologies at system‐scale offering complete end‐to‐end simulation of HPC systems and allowing for reliable comparison with existing HPC platforms.

OptoHPC‐Sim forms a powerful, modular and light‐weight solution being implemented on top of the Omnet++ discrete event simulation framework [1]. It relies on a careful balance between the model detail and the simulation execution time, employing a queue‐based HPC network model and including only the absolutely necessary details for reliably evaluating an optically enabled HPC network system. OptoHPC‐Sim is a fully reconfigurable and extendable platform, with its version 1.0 supporting torus network topologies, different routing algorithms, virtual channels for deadlock‐avoidance, Store‐and‐Forward (SF) and Virtual‐Cut‐Though (VCT) flow control methods, and a user‐friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows the detailed exploration of the complete HPC network topologies and can successfully be used for both demonstration and education purposes. It incorporates 8 synthetic traffic profiles and the Omnet++ framework allows for easy support of custom trace files or user‐defined statistical distribution traffic profiles.

OptoHPC‐Sim has been initially developed and employed to perform a comparative analysis between a system using the Titan CRAYKX7 HPC system specifications, along with a system using electro-optical technologies developed within the context of the EU project Phoxtrot [2] (Titan CRAY has been ranked as the 3rd fastest supercomputer in 2016 [3]). The results and the full details of this research work have already been published and can be found in [5], [6]. More information regarding the research work that has been carried out with OptoHPCSim can be found in [4]‐[6].

1. https://www.omnetpp.org/
2. EU FP7 project Phoxtrot https://phoxtrot.eu/
3. Top500.org, “Top 500 Supercomputers‟ list of June 2016”, 2016. [Online] Available: http://www.top500.org
4. Pavlos Maniotis, “Computing architectures exploiting optical interconnect and optical memory technologies”, Doctoral Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, November 2017, [Online] Available: https://www.didaktorika.gr/eadd/handle/10442/42017?locale=en
5. P. Maniotis, N. Terzenidis, A. Siokis, K. Christodoulopoulos, E. Varvarigos, M. Immonen, H. J. Yan, L. X. Zhu, K. Hasharoni, R. Pitwon, K. Wang and N. Pleros, “Application‐oriented On‐board Optical Technologies for HPCs”, Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 35, no. 15, pp. 3197‐3213, August 2017
6. N. Terzenidis, P. Maniotis, and N. Pleros, “Bringing OptoBoards to HPC‐scale environments: An OptoHPC simulation engine”, in Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Advanced Interconnect Solutions and Technologies for Emerging Computing Systems (AISTECS '16), HIPEAC conference, Prague, Czech Republic, 18‐20 January 2016

OptoHPC-sim is currently distributed as open-source software only for academic and educational purposes. The source code and the user manual can be found in github.

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