An Evaluation of the state of time synchronization on leadership class supercomputers

Citation

Terry Jones, George Ostrouchov, Gregory A. Koenig, Oscar H. Mondragon, and Patrick G. Bridges. An Evaluation of the state of time synchronization on leadership class supercomputers. Journal of Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. Volume 30, Issue 4. 16 pp. DOI: 10.1002/cpe.4341.

Abstract

We present a detailed examination of time agreement characteristics for nodes within extreme‐scale parallel computers. Using a software tool we introduce in this paper, we quantify attributes of clock skew among nodes in three representative high‐performance computers sited at three national laboratories. Our measurements detail the statistical properties of time agreement among nodes and how time agreement drifts over typical application execution durations. We discuss the implications of our measurements, why the current state of the field is inadequate, and propose strategies to address observed shortcomings.

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