ORNL’s David Bernholdt on the Importance of Message Passing Interface to Supercomputing

David Bernholdt is a Distinguished R&D Staff Member and Group Leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He has leadership roles in multiple projects in the DOE Exascale Computing Project (ECP) and the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program. He also leads the Programming Environment and Tools area of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). His research interests center on making it easier and more productive to create and use computational science and engineering software on the largest high-performance computer systems.

ECP’s Mike Bernhardt met with Bernholdt on November 14 at the SC18 supercomputing conference in Dallas to chat with him about his career, the evolution and significance of message passing interface (MPI) in parallel computing, and how ECP has influenced his team’s efforts.

Video Chat Notes

Bernholdt’s career at ORNL [0:23]

His intro to MPI [0:50]

Influential factors in the evolution of MPI [2:28]

Highlights of MPI activities at SC18 [3:43]

The MPI worldwide community [5:01]

How ECP has influenced the efforts of Bernholdt’s team [5:47]

Additional thoughts about MPI and SC [6:34]