Skip to content

Conference call notes 20200108

Kenneth Hoste edited this page Jan 8, 2020 · 12 revisions

(back to Conference calls)

Notes on the 139th EasyBuild conference call, Wednesday Jan 8th 2020 (17:00 - 18:00 CET)

Attendees

Alphabetical list of attendees (5):

  • Victor Holanda Rusu (CSCS, Switzerland)
  • Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent, Belgium)
  • Alan O'Cais (JSC, Germany)
  • Mikael Öhman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
  • Bart Oldeman (ComputeCanada)

Agenda

  • outlook to next release (EasyBuild v4.1.1)
  • component updates for 2020a common toolchains
  • Q&A

Outlook to next release

Component updates for 2020a common toolchains

2019b current latest version 2020a
GCC 8.3.0 9.2 (Aug'19) 9.2 (or 9.3?)
binutils 2.32 2.33.1 (Oc't19) 2.33.1 (or stick to 2.32?)
OpenMPI 3.1.4 4.0.2 (Oct'19) 4.0.2 (or 4.0.3?)
OpenBLAS 0.3.7 0.3.7 (Aug'19) 0.3.7 (or newer)
ScaLAPACK 2.0.2 2.1.0 (Nov'19) 2.1.0
FFTW 3.3.8 3.3.8 (May'18) 3.3.8
iccifort 2019 update 5 2020 initial (Dec'19) 2019 update 5 or 2020 initial?
impi 2018.5.288 2019 update 6 (Dec'19) 2019 update 6?
imkl 2019.5.281 2020 initial (Dec'19) 2019 update 5 or 2020 initial?
  • https://easybuild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Common-toolchains.html

  • new GCC 9.x release soon (9.3)?

    • could be interesting w.r.t. OpenMP 5, OpenACC 2.5, C++17 stable support, OpenACC offload support (to NVIDIA GPUs), ...
    • Victor has a contact in CSCS who can figure out timeline for GCC 9.3 release
  • OpenMPI 4.0.3 expected by end of Jan'20 (https://github.com/open-mpi/ompi/milestone/52)

  • latest OpenBLAS is already quite old, ping for an update?

  • (still) stick to latest 2019 versions for intel/2020a?

    • Bart: iccifort/imkl 2020 initial release is not really a new major version, more like a minor update of 2019 update 5
    • problem with ignored components spec in iccifort 2019.5.281 doesn't occur anymore in 2020.0.166 version
  • does latest Intel versions actually support GCC 9.x => reach out to Intel support?

  • re-consider OpenMPI (MPICH2?) & OpenBLAS (BLIS?) for future common toolchains => to be discussed at EUM

Q&A

  • Victor: organized way of testing performance for software with different toolchains?
    • ReFrame could be a driver for that
    • see https://github.com/eth-cscs/reframe/tree/master/cscs-checks/apps
    • interesting for:
      • including performance checks in EasyBuild regression tests
      • performance test reports for contributions (eb --from-pr --upload-perf-test-report)
      • evaluating new version of common toolchains
      • performance impact of swapping toolchain components (BLIS instead of OpenBLAS, for example)
      • post-maintenance testing of systems
    • open questions:
      • where to host repository with tests contributed by EasyBuild community?
        • in easybuild-checks subdirectory of ReFrame repository?
          • Kenneth: not sure if this is ideal w.r.t. keeping control & not relying on ReFrame developers too much (w.r.t. review/merging of PRs)
        • new repository under easybuilders organisation?
Clone this wiki locally