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[Colloquium] Tree-based Overlay Networks

February 5, 2009

Watch Colloquium: 

Quicktime file (345 Megs)
AVI file (571 Megs)


  • Date: Thursday, Feburary 5th, 2009 
  • Time: 11 am — 12:15 pm 
  • Place: ME 218

Dorian Arnold 
Professor, UNM Computer Science

Abstract: As high performance computing (HPC) systems continue to increase in size, scalable, reliable computational models become critical. Tree-based overlay networks (TBONs) leverage the logarithmic scaling properties of the tree organization to provide scalable data multicast, data gather, and data aggregation services. In this talk, I describe our use of the tree-based overlay network (TBON) model to address tool and application scalability. In particular, I present MRNet, our TBON prototype, and several example MRNet applications including debugging and profiling tools developed and used at the Lawrence Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratories. I will also highlight some novel algorithms we developed for failure recovery in TBON environments and describe the major research directions I am currently exploring.

Bio: Dorian is an assistant professor in Department of Computer Science at University of New Mexico. His research focuses on the scalable performance and reliability of extremely large scale systems with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of cores. Dorian earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 2008, where he developed MRNet with Phil Roth and their advisor, Barton Miller. He received M.S. and B.S. degrees from the University of Tennessee in 1998 and Regis University in 1996. Dorian also worked in the Innovative Computing Laboratory, directed by Dr. Jack Dongarra, as technical lead of the NetSolve project from 1999 – 2001 — NetSolve won an R&D Top 100 award in 2000. As a student scholar at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2006, Dorian (in collaboration with LLNL researchers) developed the Stack Trace Analysis Tool for effectively debugging large scale applications.