Perlmutter is the newest supercomputer at Berkeley Lab, California, and features a whopping 35 PB all-flash Lustre file system. Let’s dive into its architecture, showing some early performance figures and unique performance considerations, using low-level Lustre tests that achieve over 90% of the theoretical bandwidth of the SSDs, to showcase how Perlmutter achieves the performance of a burst buffer and the resilience of a scratch file system. Lastly, some performance considerations unique to an all-flash Lustre file system, along with tips on how better I/O patterns can make the most of such powerful architectures.
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) play an important role in the architecture of the modern Internet, but they are mostly transparent for the end users and therefore are an often unknown piece of the puzzle. This talk wants to shed some light on what happens “behind the scenes” of the daily usage of the Internet, and why a growing number of operators choose to connect to MIX, the largest IXP in Italy.