ALCF and MCS Establish Joint Lab for Evaluating Computing Platforms

announcements
Theory and Computing Sciences building at Argonne

To centralize research activities aimed at evaluating future high performance computing platforms, a new joint laboratory at Argonne will provide significant opportunities for the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) and the Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS), both located in the Theory and Computing Sciences building, to work collaboratively on prototype technologies for petascale and beyond.

The Joint Laboratory for System Evaluation (JLSE) will address ALCF and MCS needs in a variety of areas in hardware and software research, including investigating alternative approaches to current and future deployments within ALCF, and maintaining a range of hardware and software environments for testing MCS research ideas.

JLSE users from both divisions will use existing infrastructure and future hardware and software to explore low-level experimental computer and computational science, including OS, messaging, compilers, benchmarking, power measurements, I/O, and new file systems. 

ALCF performance engineering manager Kalyan Kumaran and MCS Deputy Director Rajeev Thakur, both computer scientists, will lead JLSE activities and oversee the research teams. Published activity reports will benefit fellow users and provide feedback to vendors and the broader research community.