The Perfect Club Benchmarks: Effective Performance Evaluation of Supercomputers

TLDR

The benchmark codes cover multiple engineering and scientific computing domains and are already used by research and development groups. The study introduces a methodology for measuring supercomputer performance, including 13 Fortran programs, a PERFECT Fortran standard for portability, and a framework for recording and sharing results. The methodology comprises 13 Fortran programs totaling over 50,000 lines of code, a set of portability guidelines, and a system for capturing and disseminating performance data across diverse machines. The results demonstrate the applicability of the methodology and serve as a preliminary step toward building a publicly accessible performance database, rather than providing definitive machine comparisons.

Abstract

This report presents a methodology for measuring the performance of supercomputers. It includes 13 Fortran programs that total over 50,000 lines of source code. They represent applications in several areas of engi neering and scientific computing, and in many cases the codes are currently being used by computational re search and development groups. We also present the PERFECT Fortran standard, a set of guidelines that allow portability to several types of machines. Furthermore, we present some performance measures and a method ology for recording and sharing results among diverse users on different machines. The results presented in this paper should not be used to compare machines, except in a preliminary sense. Rather, they are presented to show how the methodology has been applied, and to encourage others to join us in this effort. The results should be regarded as the first step toward our objec tive, which is to develop a publicly accessible data base of performance information of this type.