IBM WatsonA Power 775 High Performance Computing Cluster

Dan ChristianiBen Mihevc

● What is Watson● Power 775● Software Stack● Communication● Applications and Motivation● Wrap-up

Agenda

● Watson is a project to use natural language processing to analyse data.

● The goal is to search through data and draw meaning from it.

● Made famous on Jeopardy in 2011 where it successfully defeated top opponents.

● As an adaptive system, it learns when it is wrongand corrects itself

● A cognitive AI system for understanding complex data and information.

● Multiple Incarnations in IBM research facilities● Involved Universities: RPI, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UT Austin, ...

What is the IBM Watson

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The Power 775 Details● 10 Drawers per rack

o 8 Nodes per drawero 4 Processors per node

3.83 GHzo 8 Cores per processor

64 KB L1 cache (32 data, 32 instruction)

256 KB L2 cache 4 MB private L3 cache 32 MB shared L3 cache.

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The Power 775 Details cont.● Makes for an impressive rack

o 80 Nodeso 320 processorso 2560 compute coreso 4 hardware threads per coreo Theoretical computational limit: 78.43 Teraflops

● Interconnected racks can add powero A small setup could utilize 10 Racks

That is 25600 compute cores.

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Software Stack● The IBM Parallel Environment

o MPI, LAPI, OpenSHMEM Cross Core Communication

o Parallel Operating Environment Provides job support across nodes

o Load Leveler Scheduler Manages the job scheduling based on

priority and available resourceso IBM Parallel Debugger (pdb)

similar to gdb, but for parallel applications

o Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library (ESSL) and Parallel ESSL ESSL is a library of optimised

mathematical functions that have been optimised.

Parallel ESSL is ESSL implemented with MPI for scalable parallel computation.

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IBM Parallel Environment● Parallel Operating Environment (POE)

o Scalably manages over 1,000,000 tasks.o Organizes core dumpso Supports many communication protocols

MPI, LAPI, OpenSHMEM, etc…o Runs on Linux or AIX 7.1

● IBM Parallel Debugger (pdb)o Uses most of the same commands as gdbo Capable of observing the state of running taskso It enables the user to start jobs under debug

control or take running jobs and place them under debug control.

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IBM Parallel Environment● LoadLeveler

o A parallel job scheduling application.o Creates a priority queue to determine which

job is running. Considers: execution time, available

resources, time of day, and administrative instructions.

o Also ensures that jobs are only scheduled to functional machines.

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Physical Communication● We will start from the lowest physical

component and work our way up○ Processor level 0○ Node level 1○ Cabinet level 2○ Rack level 3

● Collective Acceleration Unit (CAU)○ A Coprocessor for parallel applications.

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Physical Communication Level 0

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Physical CommunicationLevel 1

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Physical CommunicationLevel 2

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Physical CommunicationLevel 3

Physical CommunicationLevel 3

Basic Modeland CAU flow

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CAU Step 1

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CAU Step 2

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CAU Step 3

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CAU Step 4

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What does this all create?● Watson system were designed for Data

Intensive Super Computing (DISC) ● Search and understand massive stores of

data ○ Telescope Imagery○ Medical Records○ Financial Transaction Records○ Web Pages or any other text

● DISC influences unique research○ System design, resource management○ Programming models, Algorithms

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● Pattern Recognitiono Focused on large unstructured data sources

● Healthcare○ Patient Records○ Diagnostics ○ Nurses Notes○ Discharge Papers

Motivation

● Outcomes: +Diagnosis +Treatment +Care Intervention +Machine Learned Research

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Oh! And we Forgot Jeopardy!● The Jeopardy Challenge

o Competed against historic champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter

o 3 Day Tournament in 2011.Results:

Ken Jennings: $24,000Brad Rutter: $21,600Watson: $77,147

Outcome: Definitive Win for Watson“I for one welcome our new computer overlords” - Ken Jennings

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To Wrap Up...● Much more than Jeopardy

○ Cross industry solution for understanding huge amounts of structured and unstructured data Information.

○ Machine Learning combined with advanced NaturalLanguage Processing allows for powerful and accurate Question-Answer applications.

● Watson’s special software is driven by Parallel High Performance POWER 775 systems developed for Data Intensive Supercomputing.

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Citations[1] Maciej Cytowski. (2014, Feb.) PRACE. [Online]. http://www.prace-ri.eu/Best-Practice-Guide-

IBM-Power-775-HTML#id-1.3[2] IBM. (2012, Oct.) IBM RedBooks. [Online].

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248003.pdf[3] IBM. IBM.com. [Online]. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/775/specs.html[4] IBM. IBM.com. [Online]. http://www-

03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/i/db2/products/smp.html[5] Mike Cain. (2011, Dec.) IBM.com. [Online].

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/partnerworld/pub/pdf/courses/4aea.pdf[6] (2013, Apr.) wikipedia.com. [Online]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RSCT[7] IBM. IBM.com. [Online]. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/resources.html

[8] IBM. IBM.com. [Online]. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/hpc.html

[9] IBM, "MPI Programming Guide. Parallel Environment Runtime Edition," 2013.

[10] IBM. (2013) IBM.com. [Online]. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/clresctr/vxrx/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.cluster.pe.doc%2Fpebooks.html

[11] Manoj Saxena, "IBM Watson Progress and 2013 Roadmap," IBM, 2014. [Online]. http://www.slideshare.net/manojsaxena2/ibm-watson-progress-and-roadmap-saxena

[12] Eric Brown, Jennifer Chu-Carroll, James Fan, David Gondek, Aditya A. Kalyapur, Adam Lally, J. Willian Murdock, Eric Nyberg, John Pragen, Nico Schlaefer, Chris Welty David Ferrucci, "Building Watson: An Overview of the DeepQA Project," Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2010.

[13] IBM Corporation, "IBM Content and Predictive Analytics for Healthcare," IBM Cororation, Somers, 2012.