Heterogeneous High Throughput Scientific Computing with APM X-Gene and Intel Xeon Phi

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance and energy efficiency of heterogeneous high-throughput computing architectures, specifically Intel Xeon Phi and X-Gene ARM SoC, for scientific applications within distributed systems like the WLCG.

Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of two novel low-power, high-density computing platforms for scientific computing and their suitability for distributed high-throughput environments.

Findings

Intel Xeon Phi offers high performance with moderate power consumption.

X-Gene ARM SoC demonstrates energy efficiency advantages for certain workloads.

Both architectures show potential for integration into distributed scientific computing systems.

Abstract

Electrical power requirements will be a constraint on the future growth of Distributed High Throughput Computing (DHTC) as used by High Energy Physics. Performance-per-watt is a critical metric for the evaluation of computer architectures for cost- efficient computing. Additionally, future performance growth will come from heterogeneous, many-core, and high computing density platforms with specialized processors. In this paper, we examine the Intel Xeon Phi Many Integrated Cores (MIC) co-processor and Applied Micro X-Gene ARMv8 64-bit low-power server system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for scientific computing applications. We report our experience on software porting, performance and energy efficiency and evaluate the potential for use of such technologies in the context of distributed computing systems such as the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG).