OeIM: An Optoelectronic Interconnection Middleware for the Exascale Computer

During the improved process of hardware technology and program optimization in the high-performance computer (HPC), the overall computing ability of supercomputer increases correspondingly. As a large-scale system and a milestone to the HPC community shortly, the envisioned exascale computer will be comprised of nearly 5000 interconnected nodes and tens of thousands of computing nodes. Interconnection innovations in such a system are critical to improving overall computing ability. In this paper, we investigate optoelectronic interconnection in an exascale computer system design. Here, we propose a new software stack called Optoelectronic Interconnection Middleware (OeIM) to enable efficient utilization of the optical interconnection. OeIM allows for the use of two novel functions, namely the reconfigurable function and the running-time function. We evaluate OeIM using both communication benchmark (IMB) and real-world motif applications (Linpack, HPCG, and Graph500) in a prototyped exascale computer. The experiment shows that OeIM reduced latency by form 20 to 35% in the large-range communication, improved throughput by 30% in the long-distance communication, and improved the motif applications by more than 10%. Together, our results demonstrate that OeIM is an effective bridge between the optical switching device and system scheduler to improve communication capability.