Profiling LAMMPS for GPU Disaggregation

Disaggregation is a heterogeneous HPC architecture which relocates the GPUs to a separate chassis, thus leaving homogeneous CPU nodes which can request GPU resources on-demand. This has benefits in scheduling jobs to maximize resource utilization [1] and power savings by eliminating the number of idle devices which are “trapped” in active nodes [2] . Complexities arise from an application perspective as moving the GPUs off-node introduces a latency in the CPU-GPU communication times with messages now needing to traverse the network [3] . Disaggregation also allows for customizing the ratio of CPU and GPU resources to to meet an application’s demands.