This document discusses ways to achieve cheap high-performance computing (HPC). It describes how graphics processing units (GPUs) can be used for general purpose computing through APIs like CUDA and OpenCL. GPUs have many parallel compute units that can speed up massively parallel problems. The document also discusses using cloud computing resources and Windows HPC Server to harness unused computing power for HPC tasks in a cost effective manner.

1. Cheap High-Performance
Computing
Alex Moore, HMB Inc.

2. About Me
Consultant for HMB, Inc.
.NET / Web / Java Developer
Polyglot Glutton - dabble in a lot of other
languages.
BSCSE, The Ohio State University

3. About Me
I like supercomputers

4. Why Cheap HPC?

5. Why Cheap HPC?
Because sometimes we need to go fast(er).

6. Why Cheap HPC?
Because sometimes we need to go fast(er).
We all love saving money.

7. Why Cheap HPC?
Because sometimes we need to go fast(er).
We all love saving money.
Ways to get extra performance for little to no extra
money.

8. Untapped Power
GPGPU

9. GPGPU
Gesundheit?

10. GPGPU
General Purpose computing
on
Graphics Processing Units

11. GPGPU

12. GPGPU
GPUs are great at simple programs that are
massively parallel, such as rendering images.

13. GPGPU
GPUs are great at simple programs that are
massively parallel, such as rendering images.
They can do this because they have many
shaders, or “Compute Units”

14. GPGPU
GPUs are great at simple programs that are
massively parallel, such as rendering images.
They can do this because they have many
shaders, or “Compute Units”
Shaders can be programmed to do most things
that a normal CPU can do.

15. GPGPU!

16. GPGPU!
This Laptop (2007):
32 Compute Units across 4 cores @ 940 Mhz
128 MB DDR3

17. GPGPU!
This Laptop (2007):
32 Compute Units across 4 cores @ 940 Mhz
128 MB DDR3
Tesla (NVidia GPGPU card)
448 Compute Units across 16 cores @ 1.15 Ghz
Up to 5GB DDR5

18. GPGPU!
This laptop’s GPU has about as much computing
power as the world’s fastest supercomputer
in 1993 (~91 GigaFLOPS)

19. GPGPU!
Special desktop computers with 4 Tesla cards can
do about ~4-5 TerraFLOPS
About the fastest supercomputer in 1999-2000,
ON YOUR DESKTOP

20. GPGPU!
That’s ridiculously crazy

22. GPGPU!

23. GPGPU!
So what’s cheap about it?

24. GPGPU!
So what’s cheap about it?

25. GPGPU!
So what’s cheap about it?
You can probably program your GPU, and it’s just
free untapped power

26. GPGPU
NVidia - CUDA
ATI - Stream SDK
Microsoft - DirectCompute
Apple - OpenCL

27. Problem Euler Demo
The following iterative sequence is defined for the set of positive integers:
n n/2 (n is even)
n 3n + 1 (n is odd)
Using the rule above and starting with 13, we generate the following sequence:
13 40 20 10 5 16 8 4 2 1

28. Project Euler 14

29. Project Euler 14
Ruby ~151s

30. Project Euler 14
Ruby ~151s
C#/Java ~6.1s

31. Project Euler 14
Ruby ~151s
C#/Java ~6.1s
C# Multithreaded ~3.2s

32. Project Euler 14
Ruby ~151s
C#/Java ~6.1s
C# Multithreaded ~3.2s
C (gcc -O3) ~0.5s

33. Project Euler 14
Ruby ~151s
C#/Java ~6.1s
C# Multithreaded ~3.2s
C (gcc -O3) ~0.5s
C / OpenCL ...

34. OMG Ponies Live Demo!
Subset of c99
No recursion, no function pointers, no standard headers

35. To The Cloud!
Cloud Computing

36. The Cloud
If you use the cloud for your site or as a datastore
right now, you can acquisition temporary extra
computing power very easily.

37. The Cloud
TalentRooster needed to re-encode all 1200 of
their video resumes.
To do this locally, it would have taken about 27
hours, with 60% of that time would have been
downloading and uploading.

38. The Cloud

39. The Cloud
The dev team added an extra EC2 instance, and
re-encoded the videos in 3 hours.

40. The Cloud
The dev team added an extra EC2 instance, and
re-encoded the videos in 3 hours.
Total Cost:

41. The Cloud
The dev team added an extra EC2 instance, and
re-encoded the videos in 3 hours.
Total Cost:
$5.46

42. The Cloud
Amazon also has instances with 2 Telsa GPUs on
each instance. - Just sayin’ :)

43. Stealing Candy From Babies
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

44. HPC Server
Instead of buying more computing power, just
make idle computers do your work.

45. HPC Server
HPC Server 2008 R2 allows you to add
Windows 7 workstations as compute nodes.
Also allows Azure instances to be added as
compute nodes when you need extra horsepower.

46. HPC Server
About $925 for the Suite, including licenses for
compute nodes.

47. Time and Money

48. Time and Money
Time
CLOUD THREADING HPC SERVER C GPGPU

49. Time and Money
Money
THREADING HPC SERVER C
CLOUD
GPGPU

50. Thanks!
anm@hmbnet.com
@alexmoore
www.enginerding.com