Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!gannon From: gannon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: New Bell Award Message-ID: <107900005@iuvax> Date: 7 Aug 89 16:46:00 GMT Organization: Indiana University CSCI, Bloomington Lines: 126 Nf-ID: #N:iuvax:107900005:000:5680 Nf-From: iuvax.cs.indiana.edu!gannon Aug 7 11:46:00 1989 Here is an item that should be of interest to this group: From: George Cybenko Date: Fri, 21 Jul 89 21:07:15 CDT Subject: 1989 Bell Award for Perfect Benchmarks Gordon Bell is sponsoring a new award for high performance scien- tific computing that consists of five categories. Contestants can compete in any number of the categories described below. 1989 Bell Award for Perfect Benchmark Rules Four of the five new award categories are based on the Per- fect Club benchmarks, 13 Fortran codes from a range of scientific and engineering applications, including fluid dynamics, signal processing, physical/chemical computation, and engineering design. The codes have been collected and ported to a number of computer systems by a group of applications experts from industry and academia. The $2,500 prize fund will be distributed appropriately, at the discretion of the judges, among the winning entries in the following five categories: (1) Sixteen or Fewer Processors: The measure is the fastest wall clock time (including I/O) for the entire Perfect suite on any computer system that contains no more than 16 proces- sors. The programs must be executed as a sequential job stream, i.e., only one of the benchmarks may be executing at any moment. "Computer system" includes distributed systems. There are no constraints on modifications that may be made to the codes to obtain the results as long as solutions are sufficiently close to solutions obtained by the benchmark codes. (2) More than 16 Processors: The measure is the same as in 1., except that the computer system has more than 16 processors and all processors must participate in the execution of each benchmark. (3) Perfect Suite Cost-effectiveness: The measure is the max- imum cost-effectiveness run of the Perfect suite where cost-effectiveness is defined as 1 divided by the product of running time and the cost, where running time is defined in 1., and cost is the list price of the computer system and software at the time of the run. This disqualifies noncom- mercial machines from competing, unless they are a combina- tion of commercially available computer systems. (4) Algorithms Cost-effectiveness: The measure is the maximum cost-effectiveness for the total running time of four algo- rithms (not whole benchmarks) chosen each year. The same rules apply here as in 3., except that the current list price is based on the minimum configuration required to run the algorithm. (Write to address below for more details for 1989.) (5) Perfect Subset: The measure is the minimal running time, defined as in 1., but with no restriction on the number of processors, for two codes to be selected annually from the Perfect suite. (Write to address below for more details for 1989.) Processor Definition The processor divisions in 1. and 2., although somewhat arbitrary, are intended to reflect the broad classes of extant parallel systems: current systems range from small numbers of powerful processors to large numbers of extremely simple proces- sors. The division at 16 would move to a larger number over time. The number of processors is defined as the number of simultaneous program execution streams, i.e., in effect the number of program counters in simultaneous operation. For example the Cray Y-MP in operation today has 8 processors and the number is projected to grow to 16 and 64 for the Cray 3 and 4. Similarly, the Thinking Machines Corp. CM2 has up to 4 processors each with 16K process- ing elements or is a uniprocessor with 64K processing elements. The Perfect Club Benchmark Applications The Perfect Club was formed with the purpose of developing and applying a scientific methodology for the performance evalua- tion of supercomputers. Club members were drawn from industry and academic sectors and an initial suite of 13 Fortran codes were designated as the "Perfect" Benchmark programs. These codes were selected because they solved fundamental problems across a variety of applications requiring supercomputing performance - fluid dynamics, signal processing, physical/chemical computations and engineering design. See [BCKK89] for more information about the Perfect Club codes. [BCKK89] Berry, M., Chen, D., Koss, P., Kuck, D., Lo, S., Pang, Y. Pointer, L., Roloff, R., Sameh, A., Clementi, E., Chin, S., Schneider, D., Fox, G., Messina, P., Walker, D., Hsiung, C., Schwarzmeier, J., Lue, K., Orszag, S., Seidl, F., Johnson, O., Swanson, G., Goodrum, R., Mar- tin, J., The Perfect Club Benchmarks: Effective Per- formance Evaluation of Supercomputers, CSRD Report No. 827, 1988. (To appear in the International Journal of Supercomputing Applications, 1989.) The deadline for contest submissions is December 31, 1989. For more information about the Perfect Benchmark Suite and the Bell Award for the Perfect Benchmarks write to: Bell Awards for Perfect Benchmarks Center for Supercomputing Research and Development University of Illinois Urbana, IL 61801 USA contact persoin lpointer@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu NOTE: IEEE Software administers a separate prize sponsored by Gordon Bell. Contact the IEEE Software office for information about that prize.