 |
Guy
Helmer
Ames
Laboratory Research |
I have long been interested in high performance computing, so the opportunity
to do research in the Scalable Computing
Laboratory at the Ames Laboratory
has been an incredible opportunity. I originally started doing research
under Dr. John Gustafson's direction in 1997, but he has since moved on
to other things and I have continued my research in performance measurement
tools.
NetPIPE
The main focus of my work is NetPIPE,
the Network Protocol Independent Performance Evaluator. I have been working
on extending NetPIPE to evaluate the communications performance of entire
systems, such as clusters interconnected with commodity network components.
The SCL was an early adopter of Gigabit Ethernet and we used NetPIPE to
characterize the performance advantages of Gigabit Ethernet while supplying
useful information to hardware developers to help further improve performance.
ABC
![[ABC Computer at Howe Hall, Nov 2 1999]](abc-19991102.jpg) |
| Holly Helmer (right) and I discuss the ABC with visitors
after the posthumous presentation of the Iowa Award to John Vincent Atanasoff
on November 2, 1999 |
Between 1994 and 1997, the Ames Laboratory built a working replica of the
Atanasoff Berry Computer,
the first electronic digital computer. In August and September of 1997,
I was privileged to assist with the final debugging and preparation of
the ABC replica before its unveiling and demonstration to the world
in Washington, DC at the National Press Club on October 7, 1997.
Charles Shorb, a fellow graduate student, had nearly completed debugging
the machine before leaving to begin a full-time job in Oregon. However,
a significant amount of tedious wiring repair needed to be completed, and
I was picked for the job. Fortunately, my careful, dilligent work paid
off and the ABC worked for the crowd in Washington, DC. Charles returned
to the ISU campus for two weeks in May, 1998 and we video
taped the operation the ABC for posterity.
Cluster Cookbook
Technology transfer is an important issue in research environments, and
Ames Laboratory has a rich body of knowledge dealing with clusters. I started
writing the Cluster
Cookbook to guide others in the selection of components and construction
of a cluster for parallel computation.
Other Projects
My other activities at Ames Lab have included:
-
Benchmarking the performance of ALICE,
the 64 node cluster of dual-CPU Pentium Pro's used for parallel computation.
-
Maintaining the NetPIPE
Network Protocol Independent Performance Evaluator.
-
Benchmarking interconnects (Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and Myrinet)
on Pentium Pro clusters for parallel computation.
Publications
-
Stephen Elbert, Quinn Snell, Armin Mikler, Guy Helmer, Chris Csanady, Kim
Stearns, Brian MacLeod, Matt Johnson, Bryan Osborn, Iain Verigin. Gigabit
Ethernet and Low-Cost Supercomputing. Ames Laboratory Technical Report
IS-5126. November, 1997.
(html)
Last Updated November 12, 1999