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Paravirtualization for HPC Systems

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Frontiers of High Performance Computing and Networking – ISPA 2006 Workshops (ISPA 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4331))

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the efficacy of using paravirtualizing software for performance-critical HPC kernels and applications. We present a comprehensive performance evaluation of Xen, a low-overhead, Linux-based, virtual machine monitor, for paravirtualization of HPC cluster systems at LLNL. We investigate subsystem and overall performance using a wide range of benchmarks and applications. We employ statistically sound methods to compare the performance of a paravirtualized kernel against three Linux operating systems: RedHat Enterprise 4 for build versions 2.6.9 and 2.6.12 and the LLNL CHAOS kernel. Our results indicate that Xen is very efficient and practical for HPC systems.

This work is sponsored in part by LLNL and NSF (CNS-0546737 and ST-HEC-0444412).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara

    Lamia Youseff, Rich Wolski & Chandra Krintz

  2. Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL),  

    Brent Gorda

Authors
  1. Lamia Youseff
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  2. Rich Wolski
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  3. Brent Gorda
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  4. Chandra Krintz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, School of Informatics, University of Bradford, BD7 1DP, Bradford, U.K.

    Geyong Min

  2. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’ Informazione - Second, University of Naples - Italy, Real Casa dell’Annunziata - via Roma, 29 81031, Aversa (CE), Italy

    Beniamino Di Martino

  3. Department of Computer Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada

    Laurence T. Yang

  4. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200030, Shanghai, China

    Minyi Guo

  5. Department of Computer Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany

    Gudula Rünger

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Youseff, L., Wolski, R., Gorda, B., Krintz, C. (2006). Paravirtualization for HPC Systems. In: Min, G., Di Martino, B., Yang, L.T., Guo, M., Rünger, G. (eds) Frontiers of High Performance Computing and Networking – ISPA 2006 Workshops. ISPA 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4331. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11942634_49

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11942634_49

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-49860-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49862-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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