BSMBench: a flexible and scalable supercomputer benchmark from computational particle physics

Abstract

Lattice Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD), and by extension its parent field, Lattice Gauge Theory (LGT), make up a significant fraction of supercomputing cycles worldwide. As such, it would be irresponsible not to evaluate machines' suitability for such applications. To this end, a benchmark has been developed to assess the performance of LGT applications on modern HPC platforms. Distinct from previous QCD-based benchmarks, this allows probing the behaviour of a variety of theories, which allows varying the ratio of demands between on-node computations and inter-node communications. The results of testing this benchmark on various recent HPC platforms are presented, and directions for future development are discussed.

Comments: 6 pages, 5 figures; version as presented at High Performance Computing and Simulation, HPCS 2016