Participating teams will have to provide the best solutions and IO-performance for the following tasks:

TaskDescription
IO500The IO500 benchmark is a comprehensive performance evaluation tool designed to assess the efficiency and scalability of HPC storage systems. It consists of several tests, including IOR for sequential read/write performance and mdtest for metadata operations, ensuring a thorough analysis of storage subsystems. The benchmark helps organizations and researchers to identify bottlenecks, compare different storage solutions, and guide the development of optimized storage architectures. Regularly updated results and rankings foster a competitive environment, encouraging continuous innovation in HPC storage technologies.
MD-WorkbenchThe MD-Workbench benchmark is a specialized benchmark designed to evaluate the performance of metadata operations in HPC filesystems. By simulating a range of metadata-intensive workloads, such as file creation, deletion, and attribute modification, MD-Workbench provides detailed insights into the efficiency and scalability of file system metadata handling.
Co-locating IO500/mdworkbenchRun IO500 and MD Workbench in parallel
A hint how to do this can be found in here Scoring base on results
Secret Task 1Will be disclosed start of September
Secret Task 2Will be disclosed at kick-off

Scoring for tasks

The scoring for the SSC is outlined in the table below. Any Scores that are tied to benchmarking will result in more points for higher scores. The maximum points are the number of teams in the competition, meaning for 5 teams the point spread is as follows:

The acronym DLIO refers to the “Deep learning IO Benchmark” and is used as a reference here.

ApplicationTaskPoints
IO500Submission to IO500 Webpage (Research section)
Full submission, partly missing description 2 points, 1 point for reproducibility questionnaire
3
10 Client setup
Scoring based on results
5
Description of the configurations measured and performance improvement made
At least 5 different node/process combinations with reasoning on one summary page
5
MD WorkbenchLowest (maximum latency) for the fixed configuration
Scoring base on results
5
ColocationRun IO500 and MD Workbench in parallel
Scoring base on results
5
Secret Task 1Will be disclosed start of September
Secret Task 2Will be disclosed at kick-off
Performance analysisWritten report
Comparison between benchmarks and theoretical maximum,1-2 pages of description, analysis, reasoning, and conclusion
10