Asynchronous task dispatch for high throughput computing for the eServer IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer

High Throughput Computing (HTC) environments strive “to provide large amounts of processing capacity to customers over long periods of time by exploiting existing resources on the network” according to Basney and Livny [1]. A single Blue Gene/L rack can provide thousands of CPU resources into HTC environments. This paper discusses the implementation of an asynchronous task dispatch system that exploits a recently released feature of the Blue Gene/L control system - called HTC mode - and presents data on experimental runs consisting of the asynchronous submission of multiple batches of thousands of tasks for financial workloads. The methodology developed here demonstrates how systems with very large processor counts and light-weight kernels can be configured to deliver capacity computing at the individual processor level in future petascale computing systems.