QsNetIII An HPC Interconnect

for PetaScale Systems

Duncan Roweth, Quadrics Ltd

ISC08 Dresden June 2008
Quadrics Background

• Develops interconnect products for the HPC market

– HPC Linux systems
– AlphaServer SC systems
• Quadrics is owned by the Finmeccanica group
• Quadrics will be 12 years old in July
Interconnect Network – QsNet
• QsNetIII Network
– Multi-stage switch network
– Evolution of the QsNetII design
– Increased use of commodity hardware
– Increasing support for standard
software
• QsNetIII Components
– ASICs Elan5 and Elite5
– Adapters, switches, cables
– Firmware, drivers, libraries
– Diagnostics, documentation
Elan5 Adapter Overview

CX4/ CX4/

• 2 × 25 Gbit/sQsNetIIIlinks QSNetIII QSNetIII

• PCIe, PCIe2 host interface Link Link Elan5 Adapter

• Multiple packet engines Packet Engine Packet Engine Packet Engine Packet Engine Packet Engine Packet Engine Packet Engine
16K inst cache 16K inst cache 16K inst cache 16K inst cache 16K inst cache 16K inst cache 16K inst cache

• 512KB of high bandwidth on 9K data buffers 9K data buffers 9K data buffers 9K data buffers 9K data buffers 9K data buffers 9K data buffers

chip local memory Fabric

• SDRAM interface to optional x8

local memory Host I/F

TLB
Local Memory Local Functions
Object Cache Tags
Bridge

• Buffer manager, object

Cmd Launch Buffer Manager External cache

Free List SDRAM i/f Ext i/f

PCIe
16K x 8 x 8 banks = 1MB ECC RAM PLL
cache
SERDES

External EEPROM Clocks

PCIe
DDRII
16 Lanes
QsNetIII Adapter Overview

• QM700 PCIe x16

• 128MB adapter memory
• 2 QSFP links
• Half height low profile

• Adapters variants
– PCIe Gen2
– Blade formats
– 10Gbit/s Ethernet 10GBase-CX4
Elite5 - Overview

• Physical layer DDR XAUI

– 4 x 6.25Gbit/s (2.5Gbytes/s)
in each direction
• 32-way crosspoint router
• 32 virtual channels per link
• Fat tree or mesh topologies
• Adaptive routing
• Broadcast & barrier support
• Memory mapped stats & error
counters accessed via control
network
QsNetIII Adaptive Routing

• Packet by packet dynamic routing

– Single cycle routing decision
• Selects route based on
– Link state, errors etc
– Number of pending acks
• High radix switches
– 2 routing decisions for 2048 nodes
• More flexible than QsNetII
– Operates on groups of links
– Can adaptively route up or down
 Bandwidth scalability – 1024 nodes

• Bandwidth achieved
when 1024 nodes all
communicate at the
same time
• QsNetII provides better
average bandwidth
and much narrower
spread in best to worst
case performance

System Interconnect Min Max Average

Atlas Infiniband 95 762 263
Thunder QsNetII 248 403 369

Data from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, published at the Sonoma OpenFabrics workshop June 2007
QsNetIII Device Overview

Elan Elite
Manufacturing partner LSI/TSMC G90 process
Semi custom ASICs, 500MHz system clock
High performance BGA package
672 pin 982 pin
17W 18W
QsNetIII – Federated Network Switches

• Node switch chassis

– 128 links up 128 down

• Same chassis provides multiple

top switch configurations:
– 644 512-way systems
– 328 1024-way systems
– 1616 2048-way systems
– 832 4096-way systems
QsNetIII Network 4096–way
QsNetIII cables

• QSFP connectors throughout

• Optical cables (e.g.Luxtera), 5-300m
– PVDF Plenum rated
– LSZH available as an option
• Active copper cables (Gore), 8-20m
• Copper cables (Gore) 1-10m
• No longer Quadrics proprietary

• Bit error rates are a big issue at 5 Gbps

and above
– Optical cables between switches
– Short copper cables from nodes
QsNetIII for HP BladeSystem

Elan5 mezzanine adapter

2 QsNet links Elite5 switch module
PCI-E x8 (initially) Full bandwidth
128 MB of memory 16 links to the blades (via backplane)
16 links to back of the module
2048-way QsNetIII BladeSystem Network
Building a 16K node system in 2009/10

• Single water cooled rack will • 8 Blade switches per rack

provide 1000-2000 standard • Connect 128 of these racks
cores ~12-25 TF. with 1024-way top switches

• Single fibre cable per node -

for full bi-section bandwidth.
QsNetIII Fault Tolerance

• All of the QsNetII Features

– CRCs on every packet
– Automatic retransmission
– Adaptive routing avoids failed links
– Redundant routes
– Redundant, hot plugable, PSUs and fans

+ Full line rate testing of each link as it comes up

– Switches generate CRPAT, CJPAT or PRBS packets
– Links are only added to the route tables when they are (a)
up, (b) connect to the right place, and (c) can transfer data
without error.
Software Model – Firmware & Drivers

• Base firmware in the ROMs

• Firmware modules loadable with the device driver
– Elan, OpenFabrics, 10GE Ethernet, …
• Kernel modules
– elan5, elan, rms
• Device dependent library (libelan5)
• Device independent library (libelan)
• User libraries
Software Model – Elan Libraries

• Point-to-point message • Optimised collectives

passing • Locks and atomics ops
• One-sided put/get • Global memory allocation
• Transparent rail striping
Why Quadrics?

• Focus on the most demanding HPC applications

• Delivers large system scalability
– All nodes achieve host adapter bandwidth at the same time
– Minimal spread between best and worst case performance
– Low and uniform latency
– Highly optimised collectives
• Single supplier of interconnect hardware, software, support
• Stability of our products
• Track record of delivering production systems
• European company