International recognition for supercomputer debuggers

24 February 2010

 

Researchers from the Faculty of Information Technology's eScience and Grid Engineering Lab are attracting international attention and funding for their unique expertise in debugging supercomputer software.

Led by Professor David Abramson the research team recently received funding support from the US Department of Energy, and also has a commercialisation agreement with supercomputer manufacturing giant Cray.

Professor Abramson said the funding, together with an Australian Research Council Linkage grant with Cray, would enable the team to develop debuggers that scaled to millions of processors.

The uniqueness of the research team's expertise lies in a novel approach to the debugging process.

"While traditional debuggers work by comparing program variables with user expectations, our 'relative' debugging operates by comparing data in one program with data in another that is known to be correct. So it works by detecting where the codes differ rather than from the principle of how the code should be," Professor Abramson said.

"The debugging software we have developed efficiently weeds out glitches in supercomputers through a process that could be described as the technical equivalent of a 'spot the difference' puzzle."

Professor Abramson said because of the complexity and size of supercomputer programs, previous approaches to debugging - developed with far smaller systems in mind - were ineffective.

"There has been a growing demand for debugging software fit for supercomputers, because the impact of glitches in these multiprocessor systems is huge and can be very costly to fix," he said.

Professor Abramson said supercomputers were continually growing in size and sophistication, and an increasing number of industries were using them in core operations.

"They are involved in everything from simulating and testing materials to designing medicines, so our expertise has implications for many research fields and industries," Professor Abramson said.

"It's fantastic that Monash is playing a leading role in this critically important field."