Home Team Contact Us Documentation Projects Software Links

Welcome

ZeptoOS is a research project studying operating systems for petascale architectures with 10,000 to 1 million CPUs. Operating system and run-time software is strained by ultra-scale machines, and a variety of fascinating research topics are revealed at such amazing scale. Archtectures such as IBM's BlueGene and Cray's XT3 are on the path toward petaflops and beyond, and make perfect testbeds for computer science explorations.

The ZeptoOS project is a collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Oregon.

News!

05/19/08: ZeptoOS preview for BG/P! Not a release yet, but a preview of ZeptoOS for BG/P, running our customized kernel on both I/O nodes and compute nodes, is installed on Argonne Blue Gene/P. More information is available here.

06/28/07: ZeptoOS 1.5-V1R3M2 with ZOID 1.0 Released! This is the first version that includes support for ZOID – our high-performance, extensible, multi-threaded replacement for IBM's CIOD. PVFS2 is upgraded to 2.6.3 and IBM V1R3M2-based Zepto I/O Node kernel is built with experimental computeclass and static TLB patches. You can download the tarballs from the download page.

01/03/07: Selfish Detour Benchmark Suite 1.0.7 Released! OS detour recording tool, noise injection tool and data analyzing/reporting tool are included. OS detour recording tool works on compute node environment of BlueGene/L(BLRTS), Cray XT3( Catamount and Linux) and Linux cluster, and a regular Linux machine. It is available from download page.

11/09/06: Meet with us at SuperComputing 2006 in Tampa, Florida! We will be giving two presentations at the Argonne booth (#1925): on Wednesday, 10:30-11:00am, and Thursday, 10:30-11:00am. We will also be taking part in two BOFs: Extreme Application Scalability on Wednesday, 12:15-1:15pm (room 13), and FAST-OS on Thursday, 12:15-1:15pm (room 13). See you there!

8/2/06: ZeptoOS team begins working on x86 port! We have begun working on porting our lightweight Linux kernel, ramdisk, configurator, ZOID, and other tools to x86 platforms. We will be improving TLB handling, parallel file I/O, and function-call shipping for x86-based petascale machines. Stay tuned...

7/12/06: ZeptoOS-BG 1.4-V1R3M0 Patch Released! ZeptoOS-BG release for IBM BG/L driver version V1R3M0. IBM open-source Linux tree driver is included. A patch file or full tarball are available from the download page.

4/16/06: ZeptoOS-BG 1.4p1 Patch Released! rc.sysinit enhancements, zinfo update, pread benchmark progam and bginfo package added. You can download a patch or full tarball from the download page.

1/31/06: ZeptoOS-BG-1.4 Released! Upgraded 2.6 based ION kernel! Many bug fixes, usability improvements and boot message clean up. You can check out the documentation or jump straight to the download page.

11/11/05: ZeptoOS-BG-1.2 Released! The new release includes utilities to make installation easier, switching between the default IBM configuration and Zepto as simple as a command-line utility, and integration with TAU/KTAU. Performance of the CIOD can be easily, and automatically tuned based on the number of compute nodes available on your configuration. We also updated to PVFS2 Version 1.3.1. You can check out the documentation or jump straight to the download page.

9/06/05: ZeptoOS-BG-1.1 Released! The public release of ZeptoOS marks a very important step for the evolution of BG/L. ZeptoOS is the first publically available build and development environment for the BG/L I/O nodes. ZeptoOS-1.1 also includes support for PVFS2, the only Open Source ultra-fast parallel I/O system for BG. You can check out the documentation or jump straight to the download page.

8/31/05: ZeptoOS-BG-1.1_BETA_2+PVFS2 completes first round of tests. One user already reports shaving 1 hr from their job by using ZeptoOS+PVFS2 instead of the NFS server. After our rigorous application-based testing has completed, ZeptoOS-V1.1 will become the default kernel on the Argonne BG/L machine, and the public release will be cut. Stay tuned...

8/11/05: ZeptoOS-BG-1.0.1 installed on ANL's BG/L. It includes a couple minor enhancements to status and debugging facilities. Another 16K was also shaved off the memory footprint.

8/15/05: ZOID is born. Who or what is a Zoid? Petascale architectures decompose functions across multiple nodes. Compute nodes can't do everything on their own - they need a friendly helping hand from I/O nodes and management nodes. They need a Zoid, the Open Source function call forwarding software that can be optimized for collective behavior and adjustable consistency semantics. And as a bonus, its just fun to say. We are busy prototyping, and design documents are in place. Stay tuned for the first public release.

7/10/05: ZeptoOS-BG-V1.0 was just cut and is successfully running as the default Operating System for the BG/L ION nodes on the Argonne BlueGene/L System. We are busy making enhancements, and will publically release version 1.1 in a couple weeks. It will include SSH support, PVFS, and our enhanced toolchain