Ibm Blue Gene/Q System Software Stack

The principal focus areas for system software on the IBM Blue Gene (R)/Q include ultrascalability and high reliability while delivering the full performance capability of the hardware to applications. The Blue Gene/Q system software has achieved these goals while adding functionality and flexibility compared with previous versions of Blue Gene (R). Whereas part of the software stack was improved with innovative evolutionary progress, such as unified sub-block partitioning and the ability to overcommit hardware threads, other areas, such as transactional memory and speculative execution, represent a revolutionary step forward. In this paper, we describe the overall software architecture of Blue Gene/Q. We then describe each of the main components of the software stack. In each area, we focus on the major enhancements introduced in the Blue Gene/Q system software stack.