Sage2 progresses the state of the art in:
(a) smart usage of multiple tiers of storage including Non Volatile Memories through object storage software, as opposed to using parallel file system technologies typically used in such settings. The object storage software will have advanced capabilities such as in-storage computation and Quality of Service.
(b) usage of Non Volatile Memories in ARM based platforms, and in the usage of ARM based processing for object storage systems within HPC.
(c) usage of block based data storage technologies as byte addressable entities through the mechanisms of Global Memory Abstraction hence blurring the line between memory and storage.
(d) In the areas of applications (both classical HPC and AI/DL), in enabling the usage of novel features of SAGE such as object storage, its associated API, and advanced features such as in-storage computation.
(e) AI tools such as TensorFlow, visualization tools in HPC, HPC schedulers such as SLURM, distributed storage technologies such as dCache – all used with object storage systems. We also develop novel software tools such as high speed object transfer interfaces and I/O containers for working better with object stores.
Sage2 hence aims to achieve the impacts in the area of High Performance Extreme Scale/Exascale Computing, and, AI by providing novel methods of data storage, processing and retrieval helping scientists and innovators to better utilize High Performance Computing for scientific and industrial innovation. Sage2 also aims to promote the usage of the new technologies developed within the project for wider adoption by the HPC and the enterprise computing community, with plans being considered to fully open source Mero, which will be finalised before the project ends. Sage2 will also promote the further usage of low power processing technology, ARM in High Performance Computing environments – especially within data storage. Sage2 will also influence the EuroHPC roadmaps and provide inputs to future Strategic Research and Innovation agendas that drive the same through Sage2 partners that are actively part of organisations such as ETP4HPC. Sage2 will also impact the High Energy Physics community, medical communities (Cancer diagnostics, medical Imaging, etc), radio astronomy, and communities that increasingly rely on supercomputers to run AI and Deep Learning tasks. Sage2 enables commercial partners, Seagate, ATOS and Kitware to achieve impacts in their markets – namely data storage, computing systems, and visualition and performance tools respectively.
