Publications

FY18 L2 Milestone #6360 Report: Initial Capability of an Arm-based Advanced Architecture Prototype System and Software Environment

Laros, James H.; Pedretti, Kevin P.; Hammond, Simon D.; Aguilar, Michael J.; Curry, Matthew L.; Grant, Ryan E.; Hoekstra, Robert J.; Klundt, Ruth A.; Monk, Stephen T.; Ogden, Jeffry B.; Olivier, Stephen L.; Scott, Randall D.; Ward, Harry L.; Younge, Andrew J.

The Vanguard program informally began in January 2017 with the submission of a white pa- per entitled "Sandia's Vision for a 2019 Arm Testbed" to NNSA headquarters. The program proceeded in earnest in May 2017 with an announcement by Doug Wade (Director, Office of Advanced Simulation and Computing and Institutional R&D at NNSA) that Sandia Na- tional Laboratories (Sandia) would host the first Advanced Architecture Prototype platform based on the Arm architecture. In August 2017, Sandia formed a Tri-lab team chartered to develop a robust HPC software stack for Astra to support the Vanguard program goal of demonstrating the viability of Arm in supporting ASC production computing workloads. This document describes the high-level Vanguard program goals, the Vanguard-Astra project acquisition plan and procurement up to contract placement, the initial software stack environment planned for the Vanguard-Astra platform (Astra), a description of how the communities of users will utilize the platform during the transition from the open network to the classified network, and initial performance results.