Zero-Force MPI: toward tractable toolkits for high performance computing

Shared HPC platforms continue to require substantial effort for software installation and management, often necessitating manual intervention and tedious procedures. We propose a novel model of resource sharing that shifts resource virtualization and aggregation responsibilities to client-side software, thus reducing the burdens on resource providers.The Zero-Force MPI toolkit automates the installation, build, run, and post-processing stages of HPC applications, thus allowing application scientists to focus on using resources instead of managing them. Through a provided console, MPI runtime systems, support libraries, application executables, and needed datafiles can be soft-installed across distributed resources with just a few commands. Built-in data synchronization capabilities simplify common HPC development tasks, saving end-user time and effort. To evaluate ZF-MPI, we conducted experiments with the NAS Parallel Benchmarks. Results demonstrate that the proposed run-not-install approach is effective and may substantially increase overall productivity.