skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Holistic Evaluation of Lightweight Operating Systems using the PERCU Method

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/941718· OSTI ID:941718

The scale of Leadership Class Systems presents unique challenges to the features and performance of operating system services. This paper reports results of comprehensive evaluations of two Light Weight Operating Systems (LWOS), Cray's Catamount Virtual Node (CVN) and Linux Environment (CLE) operating systems, on the exact same large-scale hardware. The evaluation was carried out over a 5-month period on NERSC's 19,480 core Cray XT-4, Franklin, using a comprehensive evaluation method that spans Performance, Effectiveness, Reliability, Consistency and Usability criteria for all major subsystems and features. The paper presents the results of the comparison between CVN and CLE, evaluates their relative strengths, and reports observations regarding the world's largest Cray XT-4 as well.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Division
DOE Contract Number:
DE-AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
941718
Report Number(s):
LBNL-1167E; TRN: US200902%%67
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English