High performance Computing is becoming a fundamental tool for the progress of science and engineering and, as such, is becoming more and more important for increasing economic competitiveness. The growing complexity of parallel computers is leading to a situation where developers and users do not fully understand the underlying issues affecting the performance of their applications which often results in an inefficient use of infrastructure. Even when application developers are aware of the need to improve the performance and efficiency of their own code, they often do not have sufficient insight as to the root causes of their bottlenecks to be able to address them properly. This may lead to blind attempts to restructure code resulting in an overall lack of efficiency. The objective of POP (Performance Optimisation and Productivity) Centre of Excellence in Computing Applications is to help developers and subsequently businesses address their performance needs so that they can ultimately become more competitive POP is based on the premise that machines will become more and more complex as we approach exascale.
The complexity, scale and variability in behavior for current HPC systems already exposes an important distinction between how developers and users think that applications and systems behave and how they actually behave.
POP offers a service to asses performance of a wide range of computing applications in a wide range of configurations from a few dozen processors to many thousands of processors. POP provides its Customers with detailed analysis of the issues affecting the performance of their code as well as suggests the most optimal way to alleviate these issues. POP targets application developers and users from all domains, including infrastructure operators, academic and industrial users. The estimated number of these applications in Europe is projected at 1500 codes. POP has the ambition of analyzing over 150 of these types of codes within the project lifetime.
However, POP does not stop at the service. POP is working to generate and expand the market. In our target customers (the communities of code developers, users and resource operators) POP aims to provide a recognized high value service that will save on developer effort and make the most of available resources while minimising cost. Based on the services from POP, application developers will make better-informed decisions to drive their work in the more productive direction. Infrastructure operators will ensure that their systems are provisioned in the most efficient way to maximise their Return on Investment. End-users (both academic and industrial) will stop wasting money and time by using applications operating below their optimal levels.
POP is one of the nine CoEs that was selected under the e-Infrastructure call (H2020-EINFRA-2014-2015/H2020-EINFRA-2015-1). POP started on 1 October 2015 and will run until 31 March 2018. The project has received EUR 4 million funding from the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. For more information, visit the project website:
https://pop-coe.eu/(öffnet in neuem Fenster)
