Compute Node Kernel (CNK) is the node level

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

for the IBM

Blue Gene Blue Gene is an IBM project aimed at designing supercomputers that can reach operating speeds in the petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) range, with low power consumption. The project created three generations of supercomputers, Blue Gene/L, Blue Gene/P, ...

series of

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

s.''Euro-Par 2004 Parallel Processing: 10th International Euro-Par Conference'' 2004, by Marco Danelutto, Marco Vanneschi and Domenico Laforenza pages 835''Euro-Par 2006 Parallel Processing: 12th International Euro-Par Conference'', 2006, by Wolfgang E. Nagel, Wolfgang V. Walter and Wolfgang Lehner page The compute nodes of the Blue Gene family of supercomputers run ''Compute Node Kernel'' (CNK), a lightweight kernel that runs on each node and supports one application running for one user on that node. To maximize operating efficiency, the design of CNK was kept simple and minimal. It was implemented in about 5,000 lines of

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

code. Physical memory is statically mapped and the CNK neither needs nor provides scheduling or context switching, given that at each point it runs one application for one user. By not allowing virtual memory or multi-tasking, the design of CNK aimed to devote as many cycles as possible to application processing. CNK does not even implement file

input/output In computing, input/output (I/O, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, possibly a human or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals ...

(I/O) on the compute node, but delegates that to dedicated I/O nodes. The I/O nodes of the Blue Gene supercomputers run a different operating system: ''I/O Node Kernel'' (

INK Ink is a gel, sol, or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as a dye or pigment, and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Thi ...

). INK is based on a modified

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

References

Supercomputer operating systems {{Operating-system-stub

See also

References