SWAPP: A Framework for Performance Projections of HPC Applications Using Benchmarks

Surrogate-based Workload Application Performance Projection (SWAPP) is a framework for performance projections of High Performance Computing (HPC) applications using benchmark data. Performance projections of HPC applications onto various hardware platforms are important for hardware vendors and HPC users. The projections aid hardware vendors in the design of future systems and help HPC users with system procurement. SWAPP assumes that one has access to a base system and only benchmark data for a target system, the target system is not available for running the HPC application. Projections are developed using the performance profiles of the benchmarks and application on the base system and the benchmark data for the target system. SWAPP projects the performances of compute and communication components separately then combine the two projections to get the full application projection. In this paper SWAPP was used to project the performance of three NAS Multi-Zone benchmarks onto three systems (an IBM POWER6 575 cluster and an IBM Intel West mere x5670 both using an Infiniband interconnect and an IBM Blue Gene/P with a 3D Torus and Collective Tree interconnects), the base system is an IBM POWER5+ 575 cluster. The projected performance of the three benchmarks was within 11.44% average error magnitude and standard deviation of 2.64% for the three systems.