High-Level Tools for Code Modernization and Migration on Future Generation Supercomputers

Ritu Arora (Texas Advanced Computing Center)

Usually, scientific applications outlive the lifespan of the High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms on which they are developed. The innovations in the HPC platforms’ hardware and parallel programming standards drive the modernization of HPC applications so that they continue being performant. While such code modernization efforts may not be very challenging for HPC experts and well-funded research groups, many domain-experts may find it challenging to adapt their applications for latest HPC platforms due to lack of expertise, time, and funds. The challenges of such domain-experts can be mitigated by providing them high-level tools for code modernization and migration. A brief overview of three such high-level tools will be presented in this talk. These three tools are: Interactive Parallelization Tool, Interactive Code Adaptation Tool (ICAT), and the Interactive Tool for Application-Level Checkpointing. Such high-level tools can have a direct impact on not only the productivity of the domain-experts who use them, and the performance of their applications, but can also contribute towards improved resource-availability at open-science supercomputing centers. A short demonstration of ICAT that will be included in the presentation will illustrate the importance of high-level tools in lowering the adoption barriers to new HPC platforms, such as those equipped with the latest Intel Knights Landing processors.