Characterizing the Performance of

Using Linux for high-performance applications on the compute nodes of IBM Blue Gene/P is challenging because of TLB misses and difficulties with programming the network DMA engine. We present a design and implementation of "big memory"--an alternative, transparent memory space for computational processes, which addresses these difficulties. The big memory uses extremely large memory pages available on PowerPC CPUs to create a TLB-missfree, flat memory area that can be used for application code and data and is easier to use for DMA operations. Singlenode benchmarks show that the performance gap narrows from more than a factor of 3 observed with a standard Linux kernel to just 0.03

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICPPW
• Authors: Kazutomo Yoshii, Kamil Iskra, Harish Naik, Pete Beckmanm, P. Chris Broekema
• Keywords: Big Memory, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Flat Memory Area, ICPPW 2009, Transparent Memory Space