Kurt Brian Ferreira

Scalable System Software

(505) 844-0433

Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico
P.O. Box 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-1319

Biography

Principal Member of Technical Staff
My area of expertise is system software and resilience/fault-tolerance methods for large-scale, massively parallel, distributed-memory, scientific computing systems. I have designed and developed a number of innovative, high-performance, and resilient implementations of low-level system software for several HPC platforms including the Cray Red Storm (XT3) machine at Sandia National Laboratories. My research interests include the design and construction of operating systems for massively parallel processing machines and innovative application and system-level fault-tolerance mechanisms for HPC.

Education

I received my BS in mathematics and BS in computer science in 2000 from New Mexico Tech and my MS in computer science in 2008 and my PhD in computer science in 2011 from the University of New Mexico

Publications

Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2022). Characterizing Memory Failures Using Benford’s Law [Conference Paper]. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85133026898&origin=inward Publication ID: 75682
Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2021). Evaluating MPI resource usage summary statistics. Parallel Computing, 108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.parco.2021.102825 Publication ID: 75299
Haskins, K., Bridges, P., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2021). A Benchmark to Understand Communication Performance in Hybrid MPI and GPU Applications [Conference Paper]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1899493 Publication ID: 76416
Haskins, K., bridges, B., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2021). A Benchmark to Understand Communication Performance in Hybrid MPI and GPU Applications [Conference Paper]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1899492 Publication ID: 76415
Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2021). Characterizing Per-node Memory Failures Using Benford?s Law [Conference Paper]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1886179 Publication ID: 75504
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., & Ferreira, K.B. (2021). An Initial Examination of the Effect of Container Resource Constraints on Application Perturbation [Conference Presenation]. https://doi.org/10.2172/1869756 Publication ID: 78565
Olivier, S.L., Brightwell, R., Ferreira, K.B., Grant, R.E., Levy, S., Pedretti, K., Younge, A.J., & Younge, A.J. (2021). SNL ATDM Software Ecosystem Operating Systems and On-Node Runtime [Presentation]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1861479 Publication ID: 77902
Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Kuhns, V., DeBardeleben, N., Blanchard, S., & Blanchard, S. (2021). Understanding the Effects of DRAM Correctable Error Logging at Scale [Conference Paper]. Proceedings – IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, ICCC. https://doi.org/10.1109/Cluster48925.2021.00060 Publication ID: 79606
Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2020). Evaluating MPI Message Size Summary Statistics [Conference Proceeding]. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85093937286&origin=inward Publication ID: 71238
Brightwell, R., Ferreira, K.B., Grant, R.E., Levy, S., Lofstead, G., Olivier, S.L., Pedretti, K., Younge, A.J., Gentile, A., & Gentile, A. (2020). ALAMO: Autonomous Lightweight Allocation Management and Optimization [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1818044 Publication ID: 74680
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., & Widener, P. (2020). The unexpected virtue of almost: Exploiting MPI collective operations to approximately coordinate checkpoints [Conference Poster]. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.4890 Publication ID: 54218
Ferreira, K.B., Grant, R.E., Levenhagen, M., Levy, S., Groves, T., & Groves, T. (2020). Hardware MPI message matching: Insights into MPI matching behavior to inform design. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 32(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.5150 Publication ID: 64546
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., & Ferreira, K.B. (2020). Space-Efficient Reed-Solomon Encoding to Detect and Correct Pointer Corruption [Conference Poster]. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85086273467&origin=inward Publication ID: 69979
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., & Ferreira, K.B. (2019). Evaluating tradeoffs between MPI message matching offload hardware capacity and performance [Conference Poster]. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. https://doi.org/10.1145/3343211.3343223 Publication ID: 70063
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Schonbein, W., Grant, R.E., Dosanjh, M., & Dosanjh, M. (2019). Using simulation to examine the effect of MPI message matching costs on application performance. Parallel Computing, 84, pp. 63-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.parco.2019.02.008 Publication ID: 67578
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., DeBardeleben, N., Siddiqua, T., Sridharan, V., Baseman, E., & Baseman, E. (2019). Lessons learned from memory errors observed over the lifetime of cielo [Conference Poster]. Proceedings – International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, SC 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/SC.2018.00046 Publication ID: 67575
Baseman, E., Debardeleben, N., Blanchard, S., Moore, J., Tkachenko, O., Ferreira, K.B., Siddiqua, T., Sridharan, V., & Sridharan, V. (2019). Physics-Informed Machine Learning for DRAM Error Modeling [Conference Poster]. 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems, DFT 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2018.8602983 Publication ID: 62156
Olivier, S.L., Brightwell, R., Pedretti, K., Younge, A.J., Evans, N., Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Grant, R.E., & Grant, R.E. (2019). SNL ATDM Software Ecosystem [Presentation]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1583026 Publication ID: 64200
Ferreira, K.B. (2019). Checkpointing Strategies for Shared High-Performance Computing Platforms. International Journal of Networking and Computing, 9(1), pp. 28-52. https://doi.org/10.15803/ijnc.9.1_28 Publication ID: 60074
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., & Ferreira, K.B. (2018). Using simulation to examine the effect of MPI message matching costs on application performance [Conference Poster]. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. https://doi.org/10.1145/3236367.3236375 Publication ID: 63034
Levy, S., Pedretti, K., Ferreira, K.B., & Ferreira, K.B. (2018). Open science on Trinity’s knights landing partition: An analysis of user job data [Conference Poster]. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. https://doi.org/10.1145/3229710.3229753 Publication ID: 62662
Herault, T., Robert, Y., Bouteiller, A., Arnold, D., Ferreira, K.B., Bosilca, G., Dongarra, J., & Dongarra, J. (2018). Optimal cooperative checkpointing for shared high-performance computing platforms [Conference Poster]. Proceedings – 2018 IEEE 32nd International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops, IPDPSW 2018. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85052224235&origin=inward Publication ID: 53793
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., DeBardeleben, N., Siddiqua, T., Sridharan, V., Baseman, E., & Baseman, E. (2018). Lessons Learned from Errors Observed over the Lifetime of Cielo [Conference Poster]. https://doi.org/10.1109/SC.2018.00046 Publication ID: 63939
Baseman, E., DeBardeleben, N., Blanchard, S., Moore, J., Tkachenko, O., Ferreira, K.B., Siddiqua, T., Sridharan, V., & Sridharan, V. (2018). Physics-Informed Machine Learning for DRAM Error Modeling [Conference Poster]. https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2018.8602983 Publication ID: 63390
Herault, T., Robert, Y., Bouteiller, A., Arnold, D., Ferreira, K.B., Bosilica, G., Dongarra, J., & Dongarra, J. (2018). Optimal Cooperative Checkpointing for Shared High-Performance Computing Platforms [Conference Poster]. https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPSW.2018.00127 Publication ID: 61598
Ferreira, K.B., Grant, R.E., Levenhagen, M., Levy, S., Groves, T., & Groves, T. (2017). Hardware MPI Message Matching: Insights into MPI Matching Behavior to Inform Design [Conference Poster]. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.5150 Publication ID: 54225
Kreitinger, R., Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., & Widener, P. (2017). Spacehog: Evaluating the costs of dedicating resources to in situ analysis [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1478158 Publication ID: 53562
Kreitinger, R., Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., & Widener, P. (2017). Spacehog: Evaluating the costs of dedicating resources to in situ analysis [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1573776 Publication ID: 53563
Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Pedretti, K., Grant, R.E., & Grant, R.E. (2017). Characterizing MPI matching via trace-based simulation [Conference Poster]. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85048316592&origin=inward Publication ID: 57396
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Bridges, P.G., & Bridges, P.G. (2017). Evaluating the Viability of Using Compression to Mitigate Silent Corruption of Read-Mostly Application Data [Conference Poster]. Proceedings – IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, ICCC. https://doi.org/10.1109/CLUSTER.2017.99 Publication ID: 57799
Baseman, E., Debardeleben, N., Ferreira, K.B., Sridharan, V., Siddiqua, T., Tkachenko, O., & Tkachenko, O. (2017). Automating DRAM Fault Mitigation by Learning from Experience [Conference Poster]. Proceedings – 47th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops, DSN-W 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSN-W.2017.39 Publication ID: 55872
Siddiqua, T., Sridharan, V., Raasch, S.E., Debardeleben, N., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Baseman, E., Guan, Q., & Guan, Q. (2017). Lifetime memory reliability data from the field [Conference Poster]. 2017 IEEE Int. Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI and Nanotechnology Systems, DFT 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/DFT.2017.8244428 Publication ID: 57295
Widener, P., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2017). It’s not the heat it’s the humidity: scheduling resilience activity at scale [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1367189 Publication ID: 56360
Gammel, M., Teranishi, K., Knight, S., Sjaardema, G., Kolla, H., Wilke, J., Slattengren, N.L., Ferreira, K.B., Bennett, J., Jain, N., Kale, L., & Kale, L. (2017). Evaluating the Charm++ Runtimes Ability to Cope with Performance Heterogeneity [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1456562 Publication ID: 55874
Widener, P., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., & Levy, S. (2017). Horseshoes and hand grenades: The case for approximate coordination in local checkpointing protocols [Conference Poster]. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58943-5_50 Publication ID: 50229
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., Bridges, P.G., Mondragon, O.H., & Mondragon, O.H. (2016). How I learned to stop worrying and love in situ analytics: Leveraging latent synchronization in MPI collective algorithms [Conference Poster]. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. https://doi.org/10.1145/2966884.2966920 Publication ID: 52299
Baseman, E., Debardeleben, N., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Raasch, S., Sridharan, V., Siddiqua, T., Guan, Q., & Guan, Q. (2016). Improving DRAM Fault Characterization through Machine Learning [Conference Poster]. Proceedings – 46th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, DSN-W 2016. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSN-W.2016.13 Publication ID: 49553
Mondragon, O.H., Bridges, P.G., Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., & Widener, P. (2016). Scheduling In-Situ Analytics in Next-Generation Applications [Conference Poster]. Proceedings – 2016 16th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing, CCGrid 2016. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=84983471009&origin=inward Publication ID: 41676
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Bridges, P.G., & Bridges, P.G. (2016). Improving Application Resilience to Memory Errors with Lightweight Compression [Conference Poster]. International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC. https://doi.org/10.1109/SC.2016.27 Publication ID: 47905
Mondragon, O.H., Bridges, P.G., Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., & Widener, P. (2016). Understanding Performance Interference in Next-Generation HPC Systems [Conference Poster]. International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85017239152&origin=inward Publication ID: 51068
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Bridges, P.G., & Bridges, P.G. (2016). Improving Application Resilience to Memory Errors with Lightweight Compression [Conference Poster]. https://doi.org/10.1109/SC.2016.27 Publication ID: 51067
Fiala, D., Mueller, F., Ferreira, K.B., Engelmann, C., & Engelmann, C. (2016). Mini-Ckpts: Surviving OS failures in persistent memory [Conference Poster]. Proceedings of the International Conference on Supercomputing. https://doi.org/10.1145/2925426.2926295 Publication ID: 49177
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., & Ferreira, K.B. (2016). An examination of the impact of failure distribution on coordinated checkpoint/restart [Conference Poster]. FTXS 2016 – Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Fault-Tolerance for HPC at Extreme Scale. https://doi.org/10.1145/2909428.2909430 Publication ID: 50259
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., Bridges, P., Mondragon, O., & Mondragon, O. (2016). How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love In Situ Analytics:Leveraging latent synchronization in MPI collective algorithms [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1364728 Publication ID: 50139
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Widener, P., Bridges, P.G., Mondragon, O., & Mondragon, O. (2016). Using Simulation to Evaluate the Performance of Resilience Strategies at Scale [Presentation]. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10214-6_5 Publication ID: 50027
Shipman, G., McCormick, P., Pedretti, K., Olivier, S.L., Ferreira, K.B., Sankaran, R., Treichler, S., Aiken, A., Bauer, M., & Bauer, M. (2016). Analysis of Application Sensitivity to System Performance Variability in a Dynamic Task Based Runtime [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1365384 Publication ID: 49758
Baseman, E., DeBardeleben, N., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Raasch, S., Sridharan, V., Siddiqua, T., Guan, Q., & Guan, Q. (2016). A Machine Learning Approach for Automatic Characterization of Memory Faults [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1346523 Publication ID: 48579
Widener, P., Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Hoefler, T., & Hoefler, T. (2016). On noise and the performance benefit of nonblocking collectives. International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 30(1), pp. 121-133. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094342015611952 Publication ID: 39411
Ferreira, K.B. (2016). An Examination of the Impact of the Failure Distribution on Coordinated Checkpoint/Restart [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1345094 Publication ID: 48501
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Bridges, P.G., & Bridges, P.G. (2016). Similarity Engine: Using Content Similarity to Improve Memory Resilience [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1239385 Publication ID: 46804
Pedretti, K., Olivier, S.L., Ferreira, K.B., Shipman, G., Shu, W., & Shu, W. (2015). Early experiences with node-level power capping on the cray XC40 platform [Conference Poster]. Proceedings of E2SC 2015: 3rd International Workshop on Energy Efficient Supercomputing – Held in conjunction with SC 2015: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1145/2834800.2834801 Publication ID: 41617
Ibtesham, D., Ferreira, K.B., Arnold, D., & Arnold, D. (2015). A checkpoint compression study for high-performance computing systems. International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 29(4), pp. 387-402. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094342015570921 Publication ID: 37407
Pedretti, K., Olivier, S.L., Ferreira, K.B., Shipman, G., Shu, W., & Shu, W. (2015). Early Experiences with Node-Level Power Capping on the Cray XC40 Platform [Conference Poster]. https://doi.org/10.1145/2834800.2834801 Publication ID: 46036
Goudarzi, A., Arnold, D., Stefanovic, D., Ferreira, K.B., Feldman, G., & Feldman, G. (2015). A principled approach to HPC event monitoring [Conference Poster]. FTXS 2015 – Proceedings of the 2015 Workshop on Fault Tolerance for HPC at eXtreme Scale, Part of HPDC 2015. https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=84979736029&origin=inward Publication ID: 41943
Riesen, R., Maccabe, B., Gerofi, B., Lombard, D., Lange, J., Pedretti, K., Ferreira, K.B., Lang, M., Keppel, P., Wisniewski, R., Brightwell, R., Inglett, T., Park, Y., Ishikawa, Y., & Ishikawa, Y. (2015). Panel: What is a Lightweight Kernel? [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1258200 Publication ID: 43556
Pedretti, K., Olivier, S.L., Ferreira, K.B., Shipman, G., Shu, W., & Shu, W. (2015). Exploring MPI Application Performance Under Power Capping on the Cray XC40 Platform [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1258232 Publication ID: 43466
Ferreira, K.B. (2015). Revisiting Checkpointing for Exascale-Class Systems [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1251139 Publication ID: 43249
Levy, S., Ferreira, K.B., Bridges, P.G., & Bridges, P.G. (2015). Similarity Engine: Using Content Similarity to Improve Memory Resilience [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1530987 Publication ID: 43098
Shipman, G., McCormick, P., Pedretti, K., Olivier, S.L., Ferreira, K.B., Chen, J.H., Sankaran, R., Treichler, S., Aiken, A., Bauer, M., & Bauer, M. (2015). Dynamic Task Scheduling to Mitigate System Performance Variability [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1249032 Publication ID: 43099
Sridharan, V., DeBardeleben, N., Blanchard, S., Ferreira, K.B., Stearley, J., Shalf, J., Gurumurthi, S., & Gurumurthi, S. (2015). Memory errors in modern systems: The good, the bad, and the ugly. International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems – ASPLOS, 2015-January, pp. 297-310. https://doi.org/10.1145/2694344.2694348 Publication ID: 38008
Widener, P., Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Fabian, N., & Fabian, N. (2015). Canaries in a coal mine: Using application-level checkpoints to detect memory failures [Conference Poster]. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=84952050378&origin=inward Publication ID: 43835
Ferreira, K.B., Levy, S., Widener, P., Arnold, D., & Arnold, D. (2014). Using Machine Learning to Optimize Uncoordinated Checkpointing Performance [Conference Poster]. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1319751 Publication ID: 39111
Ferreira, K.B. (2014). Fault Survivability of Lightweight Operating Systems for exascale. https://doi.org/10.2172/1459775 Publication ID: 38559

Showing 10 of 63 publications.

Awards & Recognition

2010

Ron Brightwell, Kurt Ferreira, Suzanne Kelly, Michael Levenhagen, Courtenay Vaughan, Kitten Operating System Virtualization Team, Sandia National Laboratories, March 23, 2010

2009

Ronald Brightwell, Kurt Brian Ferreira, Suzanne M. Kelly, James H. Laros, Kevin Pedretti, James Tomkins, John P. Vandyke, Courtenay T. Vaughan, Robert Ballance, Trammell Hudson, , R&D 100 Award, R&D Magazine, One of the 100 Most Technologically Significant New Products of the Year, June 1, 2009