OFA at SC21 – New FSDP/OFMF Demos, OFA Community BoFs and More

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The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) is excited to be onsite at the upcoming Supercomputing Conference 2021 (SC21) – November 15-19 in St. Louis, MO. The OFA Community will be well represented at this year’s gathering with a variety of educational opportunities that showcase the organization’s new initiatives, including the OpenFabrics Management Framework (OFMF) and the Fabric Software Development Platform (FSDP).

OFA Booth: FSDP and OFMF Demos

The OFA will take part in the SC21 Open Standards Pavilion (Booth #1507), which features a variety of organizations advancing next-generation HPC, networking, and storage technologies via open standards. OFA Chair Doug Ledford will be on hand to answer questions about the organization’s expanded mission, upcoming OFA Workshop, and new OFMF and FSDP initiatives. The kiosk will feature the OFA’s first public demo highlighting operation of the FSDP with a live connection to the cluster and demonstrations of the management web interface.

Also, the OFA will host an OFMF demo next door at the Gen-Z Consortium exhibit (Booth #1707), which will showcase the real-time addition and subtraction of fabric and memory components using Gen-Z on the OFMF. For additional background information on the OFA and Gen-Z Consortium’s collaboration for fabric agnostic development, check out our recent joint-webinar.

OFA Community Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions

Adding to our onsite presence, the OFA’s Michael Aguilar will also be leading an online BoF session highlighting the new OFMF effort:

Title: Solving the Fabric Management Gordian Knot

  • Date/Time: Tuesday, 16 November 2021, 12:15pm – 1:15pm CST
  • Location: Online
  • Presenters: Michael Aguilar (session leader), Russell Herrell, Richelle Ahlvers, Jim Hull, Phil Cayton, and Erich Hanke
  • Abstract: Modern HPC and Enterprise computing systems can benefit from a more efficient way to assemble and control network fabrics. The OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA) together with its partners the DMTF, SNIA, and the Gen-Z Consortium, are developing a new open-source fabric management ‘framework’ to provide a unified set of tools to control and monitor multiple network fabric types. This BoF seeks input from the HPC network, storage, and security communities to provide useful tools to meet their needs, as well as, open participation in the development of the OpenFabrics Management Framework.

In addition to the OFA-led BoF, below are a handful of other sessions we recommend that the OFA Community check out:

Title: InfiniBand In-Network Computing Technology and Roadmap

  • Date/Time: Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 12:15pm – 1:15pm CST
  • Location: 223-224
  • Presenters: Gilad Shainer (session leader), Dhabaleswar Panda, Daniel Gruner, and Jithin Jose
  • Abstract: Standard-based interconnect InfiniBand enjoys the continuous development of new capabilities. HDR 200G InfiniBand In-Network Computing technology provides innovative engines offloading and accelerating communication frameworks and application algorithms. The session will discuss the InfiniBand In-Network Computing technology and test results from DoE systems, Canada’s fastest InfiniBand Dragonfly-based supercomputer at the University of Toronto, and the NVIDIA Selene AI supercomputer and more. As the need for faster data speed accelerates, the InfiniBand Trade Association has been working to set the goals for future speeds (NDR, XDR). This topic will also be covered at the session, and will include the first NDR results.

Title: InfiniBand In-Network Computing Technology and Roadmap

  • Date/Time: Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 12:15pm – 1:15pm CST
  • Location: 223-224
  • Presenters: Gilad Shainer (session leader), Dhabaleswar Panda, Daniel Gruner, and Jithin Jose
  • Abstract: The CXL™ Consortium, the Gen-Z Consortium™ and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) are all working to advance the HPC industry. This BoF session at SC21 will feature a panel of experts from CXL™ Consortium, Gen-Z Consortium™ and SNIA and from end users Facebook and Microsoft to discuss how the disaggregation of systems and persistent memory are critical to the industry and is being enabled by our technologies. During the BoF session, we invite the HPC community to provide their feedback and ask questions to our panel of experts.

Title: UCX: Unified Communication X Community

  • Date/Time: Tuesday, November 16, 2021, 5:15pm – 6:45pm CST
  • Location: 223-224
  • Presenters: Gilad Shainer (session leader), Jeff Kuehn, Pavel Shamis, Dhabaleswar Panda, Brad Benton, and Yanfei Guo
  • Abstract: Standard-based interconnect InfiniBand enjoys the continuous development of new capabilities. HDR 200G InfiniBand In-Network Computing technology provides innovative engines offloading and accelerating communication frameworks and application algorithms. The session will discuss the InfiniBand In-Network Computing technology and test results from DoE systems, Canada’s fastest InfiniBand Dragonfly-based supercomputer at the University of Toronto, and the NVIDIA Selene AI supercomputer and more. As the need for faster data speed accelerates, the InfiniBand Trade Association has been working to set the goals for future speeds (NDR, XDR). This topic will also be covered at the session, and will include the first NDR results.

Title: CXL™ Consortium, Gen-Z Consortium™, SNIA and End-Users – Is Disaggregation of Systems the Future?

  • Date/Time: Wednesday, November 17, 2021, 12:15pm – 1:15pm CST
  • Location: 225-226
  • Presenters: Kurtis Bowman (session leader), Scott Shadley, Tracy Spitler, Bharath Muthiah, and Glenn Ward
  • Abstract: The CXL™ Consortium, the Gen-Z Consortium™ and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) are all working to advance the HPC industry. This BoF session at SC21 will feature a panel of experts from CXL™ Consortium, Gen-Z Consortium™ and SNIA and from end users Facebook and Microsoft to discuss how the disaggregation of systems and persistent memory are critical to the industry and is being enabled by our technologies. During the BoF session, we invite the HPC community to provide their feedback and ask questions to our panel of experts. 

We hope to see you onsite at SC21 in just a couple of weeks! Please contact press@openfabrics.org with any questions.