Published 2019 | Version v1
Journal article

Porting the LHCb Stack from x86 (Intel) to aarch64 (ARM) and ppc64le (PowerPC)

  • 1. Fakultät für Informatik und Wirtschaftsinformatik - Fachgebiet Informatik, Hochschule Karlsruhe -Technik und Wirtschaft, Karlsruhe (Germany)
  • 2. EP, CERN, Meyrin (Switzerland)
  • 3. Escuela de Ingeniería Informática, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Asturias (Spain)

Description

LHCb is undergoing major changes in its data selection and processing chain for the upcoming LHC Run 3 starting in 2021. With this in sight several initiatives have been launched to optimise the software stack. This contribution discusses porting the LHCb Stack from x86_64 architecture to both architectures aarch64 and ppc64le with the goal to evaluate the performance and the cost of the computing infrastructure for the High Level Trigger (HLT). This requires porting a stack with more than five million lines of code and finding working versions of external libraries provided by LCG. Across all software packages the biggest challenge is the growing use of vectorisation - as many vectorisation libraries are specialised on x86 architecture and do not have any support for other architectures. In spite of these challenges we have successfully ported the LHCb High Level Trigger code to aarch64 and ppc64le. This contribution discusses the status and plans for the porting of the software as well as the LHCb approach for tackling code vectorisation in a platform independent way.

Availability note (English)

Available from https://www.epj-conferences.org/articles/epjconf/pdf/2019/19/epjconf_chep2018_05016.pdf; https://doaj.org/article/d14f18edf87248e6a7cd90dff5e72a8a

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
EPJ. Web of Conferences
Journal Volume
214
Journal Page Range
vp.
ISSN
2100-014X

Conference

Title
23. International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics
Acronym
CHEP 2018
Dates
9-13 Jul 2018
Place
Sofia (Bulgaria)

INIS

Country of Publication
France
Country of Input or Organization
France
INIS RN
53095722
Subject category
S97: MATHEMATICAL METHODS AND COMPUTING;
Resource subtype / Literary indicator
Conference
Descriptors DEI
CERN LHC; COMPUTER CALCULATIONS; COMPUTER CODES; PERFORMANCE; PROGRAMMING
Descriptors DEC
ACCELERATORS; CYCLIC ACCELERATORS; STORAGE RINGS; SYNCHROTRONS