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IBM Journal of Research and Development  
Volume 49, Number 2/3, Page 319 (2005)
Blue Gene
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Blue Gene/L advanced diagnostics environment

by M. E. Giampapa, R. Bellofatto, M. A. Blumrich, D. Chen, M. B. Dombrowa, A. Gara, R. A. Haring, P. Heidelberger, D. Hoenicke, G. V. Kopcsay, B. J. Nathanson, B. D. Steinmacher-Burow, M. Ohmacht, V. Salapura, P. Vranas
This paper describes the Blue Gene®/L advanced diagnostics environment (ADE) used throughout all aspects of the Blue Gene/L project, including design, logic verification, bring-up, diagnostics, and manufacturing test. The Blue Gene/L ADE consists of a lightweight multithreaded coherence-managed kernel, runtime libraries, device drivers, system programming interfaces, compilers, and host-based development tools. It provides complete and flexible access to all features of the Blue Gene/L hardware. Prior to the existence of hardware, ADE was used on Very high-speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) models, not only for logic verification, but also for performance measurements, code-path analysis, and evaluation of architectural tradeoffs. During early hardware bring-up, the ability to run in a cycle-reproducible manner on both hardware and VHDL proved invaluable in fault isolation and analysis. However, ADE is also capable of supporting high-performance applications and parallel test cases, thereby permitting us to stress the hardware to the limits of its capabilities. This paper also provides insights into system-level and device-level programming of Blue Gene/L to assist developers of high-performance applications o more fully exploit the performance of the machine.
Related Subjects: Design verification; Testing