ARGO OS

Argo
PI	Pete Beckman (ANL)
Chief Scientist	Marc Snir (ANL)
Website	http://argo-osr.org/

Disruptive new computing technologies, such as 3D memory, ultra-low-power cores, and em-bedded network controllers, are changing the scientific computing landscape. For the next few years, novel designs will flourish as new technologies are explored. Furthermore, changing work-flows and programming environments are making new demands on the low-level system software. As noted by DOE workshops and reports, today’s operating system and runtime (OS/R) software cannot be incrementally extended and grown into an exascale solution. A new approach is required.

Argo is a project to develop new exascale Operating System and Runtime Software (OS/R) specifically designed to support extreme-scale scientific computation. Argo is built on an agile, new modular architecture that supports both global optimization and local control. It aims to efficiently leverage new chip and interconnect technologies while addressing the new modalities, programming environments, and workflows expected at exascale. It is designed from the ground up to run future HPC applications at extreme scales.

Argo will be developed over the course of three years and will result in an open-source prototype system that is vendor neutral and runs on several architectures. Four key innovations create the foundation of this project: a new node OS/R that supports OS specialization, a lightweight run-time system for massive concurrency, a global view that supports cross-cutting verticals of power and fault management, and a backplane to allow resource managers and optimizers to communicate and control the platform.

Team Members

• Argonne National Laboratory: Pete Beckman, Marc Snir, Pavan Balaji, Rinku Gupta, Kamil Iskra, Franck Cappello, Rajeev Thakur, Kazutomo Yoshii
  
• Boston University: Jonathan Appavoo, Orran Krieger
  
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: Maya Gokhale, Edgar Leon, Barry Rountree, Martin Schulz, Brian Van Essen
  
• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Sriram Krishnamoorthy, Roberto Gioiosa
  
• University of Chicago: Henry Hoffmann
  
• University of Illinois Champagne Urbana: Laxmikant Kale, Eric Bohm, Ramprasad Venkataraman
  
• University of Oregon: Allen Malony, Sameer Shende, Kevin Huck
  University of Tennessee Knoxville: Jack Dongarra, George Bosilca, Thomas Herault