D7.3.1: Best Practice Guides for New and Emerging Architectures

Work Package 7 ‘Application Enabling and Support’ provides applications enabling support for HPC applications codes which are important for European researchers to ensure that these applications can effectively exploit multi-petaflop systems. Applications will be selected either via PRACE Preparatory Access or identified as addressing major socio-economic challenges with the advice of the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee. This applications enabling activity will use the most promising tools, algorithms and standards for optimisation and parallel scaling that have recently been developed through research and experience in PRACE and other projects. Through the applications-enabling work, WP7 develops specific expertise on most, if not all, of the architectures which make up the European HPC system. PRACE-1IP provided best practice guides on the PRACE Tier-0 systems that cover programming techniques, compilers, tools and libraries. PRACE-2IP supplemented these with best practice guides for the other architectures which are important at Tier-1 to allow European researchers to make efficient use of these systems. Finally, PRACE-3IP Task 7.3 called ‘Support for European Researchers’ supplements these with best practice guides for current and future HPC systems. Topics for these best practice guides include: optimal porting of applications (e.g., choice of numerical libraries and compiler options); architecture specific optimisation and scaling techniques; optimal system environment (e.g. tuneable system parameters, job placement and optimised system libraries); debugging tools, performance analysis tools and programming environment. This report describes the process which led to the best practice guides. For the best practice guides itself we refer to the online versions on the PRACE RI web site