Indiana University's Center for Research in Extreme Scale Technologies (CREST) is the recipient of a three-year, $1.1 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop software that improves the speed and programmability of supercomputers. This funding is part of a $7.05 million grant for the XPRESS (eXascale PRogramming Environment and System Software) project, led by Sandia National Laboratories as part of the DOE Office of Science Advanced Scientific Computing Research X-Stack programme.
As part of the Pervasive Technology Institute to pioneer research at the frontiers of exascale computing, CREST was created by IU in 2011. Andrew Lumsdaine and Thomas Sterling, both professors in the School of Informatics and Computing at IU Bloomington, lead CREST as director and associate director, respectively. Sterling also serves as CREST’s chief scientist.
‘We're writing software that moves execution from static to dynamic, allowing supercomputers to use new information as it is being revealed,’ commented Sterling. ‘By doing so, supercomputers will “think” about how they use their resources, as well as where and when they schedule various concurrent tasks.’
He added: ‘Our goal is to completely redesign the system software in order to produce a revolutionary class of supercomputers. It is exciting that IU will be at the forefront of such research, setting future directions for exascale computing and programming.’
