High performance computing at Intel: the OSCAR software solution stack for cluster computing

This is an exciting time in high performance computing (HPC). Radical change has become the norm as clusters of commercial off the shelf (COTS) computers have come to dominate HPC. The hardware for HPC is in good shape and is steadily getting better. What about the software? The software for HPC is in poor shape. Its great for organizations that can accept the “people-time” required to keep clusters up and running, but for the commercial side of technical computing, the software solutions available today just are not up to the task. We believe that the best way to solve our HPC software problems is to work together. Intel has worked to create cross-industry groups dedicated to solving HPC software problems. On the shared memory front, we are active in the OpenMP Architecture Review Board. Working with this group, we have helped standardize API´s for shared memory programming. For clusters, we have helped found the Open Cluster Group. The Open Cluster Group is an informal consortium of commercial and research organizations interested in cluster-computing. Our mission is to make clusters a realistic option for organizations that use high performance computing to accomplish their goals. The first project from the Open Cluster Group is OSCAR: a fully integrated easy to install bundle of software designed to make it easy to build and use a cluster for high performance computing. Everything you need to build, maintain, and use a modest sized Linux cluster is included in OSCAR. We introduce OSCAR and provide the background information you need to use it