Erik P. DeBenedictis
Sandia National Laboratories
P. O. Box 5800 MS 1319
Albuquerque, NM 87112
(505) 284-4017 (o+m)
other contact data suppressed
EDUCATION
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
- Sandia National Laboratories, September 2001 to present, Albuquerque, NM, Principal Member of Technical Staff
- NetAlive Corporation, December 1991 to July 2001, Redwood City, CA, Co-founder and CEO
- nCUBE Corporation, March 1990 to November 1991, Foster City, CA, Senior Scientist
- Ansoft Corporation, November 1988 to February 1990, Pittsburgh, PA, Project Manager
- AT&T; Bell Laboratories, February 1983 to November 1988, Holmdel, NJ, Member of the Technical Staff
- Yale University, Computer Science Department, August 1987-July 1989, New Haven, CT, Research Affiliate
PATENTS
- 2,226,560 (Canada) Method and apparatus for controlling connected computers without programming (assigned to NetAlive)
- 6,144,984 Method and apparatus for controlling connected computers without programming (assigned to NetAlive)
- 693,585 (Australia) Method and apparatus for controlling connected computers without programming (assigned to NetAlive)
- 5,625,823 Method and apparatus for controlling connected computers without programming (assigned to NetAlive)
- 4,845,744 Method of overlaying virtual tree networks onto a message passing parallel processing network (assigned to Lucent Technologies)
- 4,766,534 Parallel processing network and method (assigned to Lucent Technologies)
- 4,404,676 Partitioning method and apparatus using data-dependent boundary-marking code words (assigned to Pioneer Electronics, Japan)
AWARD
WORKSHOPS PRODUCED
- Frontiers of Extreme Computing, October 23-27, 2005, Santa Cruz, CA see overview document SAND2005-6637P.
- Frontiers of Extreme Computing 2007/Zettaflops Workshop, October 21-25, 2005, Santa Cruz, CA
- The Path to Extreme Supercomputing, October 12, 2004, Santa Fe, NM
- Sandia Petaflops Workshop, June 18, 2002, Albuquerque, NM
PUBLICATIONS
- S. Frost-Murphy, E. DeBenedictis, P. Kogge, "General floorplan for reversible quantum-dot cellular automata," in Proceedings of the 4th international Conference on Computing Frontiers (Ischia, Italy, May 07 - 09, 2007). CF '07. ACM, New York, NY, 77-82. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1242531.1242545
- E. DeBenedictis, "Reversible logic for supercomputing," in Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Computing Frontiers (Ischia, Italy, May 04 - 06, 2005). CF '05. ACM, New York, NY, 391-402. SAND2004-6603C. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1062261.1062325
- R. Brightwell, W. Camp, B. Cole, E. DeBenedictis, R. Leland, J. Tomkins, A. Maccabe, "Architectural Specification for Massively Parallel Computers -- An Experience and Measurement-Based Approach" Research Articles. Concurr. Comput. : Pract. Exper. 17, 10 (Aug. 2005), 1271-1316. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cpe.v17:10
- E. DeBenedictis, "Will Moore’s Law be Sufficient," in Proceedings of the 2004 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing (November 06 - 12, 2004). Conference on High Performance Networking and Computing. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 45. DOI= http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SC.2004.68
- E. DeBenedictis, "Comment On User's Bill of Rights," COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM February 1999/Vol. 42, No. 2
- Ghosh, S., Debenedictis, E., and Yu, M. 1995. "YADDES: a novel algorithm for deadlock-free distributed discrete-event simulation." Int. J. Comput. Simul. 5, 1 (May. 1995), 43-83.
- E. DeBenedictis, S. C. Johnson, " Extending Unix for scalable computing, " IEEE Computer, vol.26, no.11, pp.43-53, Nov 1993
- E. DeBenedictis and S. Johnson, "I/O for Tflops Supercomputers," Proc. Sixth SlAM Conf. Parallel Processing Scientific Computing, SIAM, Philadelphia, 1993, pp. 751-758.
- E. DeBenedictis, J. M. del Rosario, "Modular scalable I/O," (electronic copy) J. Parallel Distrib. Comput. 17, 1-2 (Jan. 1993), 122-128.
- E. DeBenedictis and M. Del Rosario, "nCUBE Parallel I/O Software," in Proceedings of the 1992 International Phoenix Conference on Computers and Communications.
- E. DeBenedictis, S. Ghosh, and M. Yu, "A Novel Algorithm for Discrete-Event Simulation," IEEE Computer, June 1991, pp. 21-33.
- Ghosh, S.; Debenedictis, E., "An asynchronous distributed discrete event simulation algorithm for cyclic circuits using a data-flow network," Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1991. 'Decision Aiding for Complex Systems, Conference Proceedings., 1991 IEEE International Conference on , vol., no., pp.265-268 vol.1, 13-16 Oct 1991
- M. Yu, S. Ghosh, E. DeBenedictis, "A provably correct, non-deadlocking parallel event simulation algorithm, " in Proceedings of the 24th Annual Symposium on Simulation (New Orleans, Louisiana, United States). A. H. Rutan, Ed. Annual Simulation Symposium. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 100-111.
- E. DeBenedictis and P. Madams, "nCUBE's Parallel I/O with Unix Compatibility," in Proceedings of the Sixth Distributed Memory Computing Conference, May 1991.
- E. DeBenedictis, "Hypercube Unix," in Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications, March 1990.
- E. DeBenedictis and B. Ackland, "Circuit Simulation on a Hypercube," in Proceedings of the MULTI '88 Conference, February 1988, pp. 89-93.
- E. DeBenedictis, "Multiprocessor Architectures are Converging," in Proceedings of the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications, January 1988, pp. 13-20.
- E. DeBenedictis, "Distributed programs and subroutines for multiprocessors," in Proceedings of the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications: Architecture, Software, Computer Systems, and General Issues - Volume 1 (Pasadena, California, United States, January 19 - 20, 1988). G. Fox, Ed. ACM, New York, NY, 451-457.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, "A Multiprocessor Using Protocol-Based Programming Primitives," in International Journal of Parallel Programming, February 1987, pp. 53-84.
- E. DeBenedictis, "Protocol-Based Multiprocessors," in Hypercube Multiprocessors 1987, M. Heath, ed., September 1986, pp. 10-16.
- E. DeBenedictis, "Multiprocessor Programming with Distributed Variables," in Hypercube multiprocessors 1986 (A87-37501 16-61). Philadelphia, PA, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1986, p. 70-86.
- B. Ackland, S. Lucco, T. London, and E. DeBenedictis."CEMU: A Parallel Circuit Simulator,". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Design, October 1986.
- B. Ackland, S. Ahuja, E. DeBenedictis, T. London, S. Lucco, and D. Romero, "MOS Timing Simulation on a Message Based Multiprocessor," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, October 1986, pp. 446-450.
- D. Shenton, E. DeBenedictis, and B. Locanthi, "Improved Reed-Solomon Decoding Using Multiple-Pass Decoding," in Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Vol. 33, No. 11, pp. 878-887, November 1985.
- E. Brooks, III, G. Fox, M. Johnson, S. Otto, P. Stolorz, W. Athas, E. DeBenedictis, R. Faucette, C. Seitz, J. Stack, "Pure gage SU(3) lattice theory on an array of computers," Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 2324 (1984)
- E. Brooks III, G. Fox, S. Otto, M. Randeria, B. Athas, E. DeBenedictis, M. Newton, and C. Seitz, "Glueball Mass Calculations on an Array of Computers," Nuclear Physics B (Field Theory and Statistical Systems), September 5, 1983, pp. 383-401.
- E DeBenedictis, "Techniques for Testing Integrated Circuits," Ph. D. Thesis.
- E. DeBenedictis and C. Seitz, "Testing and Structured Design," in Proceedings of the 1982 International Test Conference, November 1982, pp 58-66.
- Erik DeBenedictis, Mitsuya Komamura, Bart Locanthi, and Larry White, "An Error Correction Algorithm of the Convolutional Type Using Threshold Decoding," 67th AES Convention, October 31/November 3, 1980, New York.
SELECTED INVITED PRESENTATIONS
- Exotic Technologies Panel and Time Capsule Submission for Most Exciting Architecture at SC 20, Exotic Technologies Panel Session at SC 06, Tampa, FL, November 13-16, 2006. Time capsule at NERSC to be opened at SC 20.
- Petaflops, Exaflops, and Zettaflops for Climate Modeling, Presentation at 8th Internation Workshop on Next Generation Climate Models for Advanced Hight Performance Computing Facilities, February 23-25, Albuquerque, NM
- Petaflops, Exaflops, and Zettaflops for Science and Defense, SAND2005-2690-B, Presentation at Cray User Group, May 16-19, 2005, Albuquerque NM
- Red Storm (English Hints), SAND2005-2126P, Presentation at VNIIEF, April 12-13, 2005, Sarov, Russia
- "Beyond Petascale Computing -- The End Of The Beginning Or The Beginning Of The End?," SAND2004-4328C, invited presentation at the Conference on Computational Physics 2004, Genoa, Italy, September 1-4, 2004.
- ASCI Red Storm and and Supercomputer Scalability, SAND2003-3124P, Symposium on Supercomputations, VNIIEF, Sarov, Russia, October 6-10, 2003
- How Sandia May Reach 1000 TFLOPS, SAND2003-2869P, Mission Critical Computing Conference, Washington DC, June 19-20, 2003
- The Red Storm Computer Architecture and its Implementation, SAND2003-1601P, CCGrid 2003, Tokyo Japan, May 12-15, 2003
- Red Storm Update, SAND2003-1380P, HPC User Forum, Sundance Utah, April 9, 2003
- E. DeBenedictis, "Distributed programs and subroutines for multiprocessors," in Proceedings of the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications: Architecture, Software, Computer Systems, and General Issues - Volume 1 (Pasadena, California, United States, January 19 - 20, 1988). G. Fox, Ed. ACM, New York, NY, 451-457.
SAND DOCUMENTS
Selected documents approved for public release as part of my work for Sandia National Laboratories
- Red Storm Update, SAND2003-1380P, HPC User Forum, Sundance Utah, April 9, 2003
- The Red Storm Computer Architecture and its Implementation, SAND2003-1601P, CCGrid 2003, Tokyo Japan, May 12-15, 2003
- How Sandia May Reach 1000 TFLOPS, SAND2003-2869P, Mission Critical Computing Conference, Washington DC, June 19-20, 2003
- A Network Architecture for Petaflops Supercomputers, SAND Report SAND2003-2954
- ASCI Red Storm and and Supercomputer Scalability, SAND2003-3124P, Symposium on Supercomputations, VNIIEF, Sarov, Russia, October 6-10, 2003
- The Sandia Petaflops Planner, SAND Report SAND2003-3609
- "Beyond Petascale Computing -- The End Of The Beginning Or The Beginning Of The End?," SAND2004-4328C, invited presentation at the Conference on Computational Physics 2004, Genoa, Italy, September 1-4, 2004.
- "Beyond Petascale Computing -- The End Of The Beginning Or The Beginning Of The End?," SAND2004-4706P, presentation at ANL, Argonne, IL, September 14, 2004.
- Issues in Supercomputer Architecture for the Next Dozen Years, SAND2004-0680P, presentation at NMSU, Las Cruces, NM, January 29, 2004
- Extreme Supercomputing, SAND2004-4707P, seminar at University of Notre Dame, CS & Eng. and Center for Nano Science and Technology, September 13, 2004
- Taking ASCI Supercomputing to the End Game, SAND Report SAND2004-0959
- Devices and Architecture for Maximum Supercomputer Performance, SAND Report SAND2004-1545C, paper at SC 04, November 6-12, 2004, Pittsburgh, PA
- Completing the Journey of Moore's Law, SAND2004-1548, presentation at SOS 8, April 13-14, 2004, Charleston, SC
- Completing the Journey of Moore's Law, SAND2004-1728P, presentation at IBM Austin, April 23, 2004, Austin, Texas
- Completing the Journey of Moore's Law, SAND2004-1890P, presentation at Notre Dame, May 4, 2004, South Bend, IN
- Completing the Journey of Moore's Law, SAND2004-1891P, presentation at UIUC, May 5, 2004, Champaign, IL
- Completing the Journey of Moore's Law, SAND2004-4329P, presentation at PNNL, August, 25, 2004, Richland, WA
- Applications Modeling for Supercomputer Architecture, SAND2004-2161P, presentation at meeting with VNIIEF, May 31-June 4, 2004, Vienna, Austria
- Completing the Journey of Moore's Law, presentation at ARSC
- Reversible Logic for Supercomputing, released as SAND2004-6603C, presentation at Computing Frontiers 2005, May 4-6, 2005, Ischia, Italy
- Red Storm (no pictures), SAND2005-2126P, Presentation at VNIIEF, April 12-13, 2005, Sarov, Russia
- Red Storm (English Hints), SAND2005-2126P, Presentation at VNIIEF, April 12-13, 2005, Sarov, Russia
- Reversible Logic for Supercomputing, SAND2005-2689, Presentation at Computing Frontiers and RC'05, the First International Workshop on Reversible Computing, May 4-6, 2005, Ischia, Italy
- Reversible Logic for Supercomputing actual presentation, SAND2005-2689, Presentation at Computing Frontiers and RC'05, the First International Workshop on Reversible Computing, May 4-6, 2005, Ischia, Italy
- Reversible Logic for Supercomputing posted, SAND2005-2689, Presentation at Computing Frontiers and RC'05, the First International Workshop on Reversible Computing, May 4-6, 2005, Ischia, Italy
- Petaflops, Exaflops, and Zettaflops for Science and Defense, SAND2005-2690-B, Presentation at Cray User Group, May 16-19, 2005, Albuquerque NM
- Maintaining Scalability of Information Processing Systems, SAND2005-4794C, Proposal to CRA Conference on Grand Research Challenges "Revitalizing Computer Architecture Research", December 4-7, 2005, Monterey Bay, CA
- Issues for the Future of Supercomputing: Impact of Moore's Law and Architecture on Application Performance, SAND2005-6499P, Tutorial at SC 05, November 14, 2005, Seattle, WA
- Frontiers of Extreme Computing, SAND2005-6637P, overview of Zettaflops Workshop, October 23-27, 2005, Santa Cruz, CA
- Quantum Programming for Classical Programmers, SAND2005-7966P, presentation for sharing with non-Sandia collaborators, December 19, 2005
- Petaflops, Exaflops, and Zettaflops for Climate Modeling, Presentation at 8th Internation Workshop on Next Generation Climate Models for Advanced Hight Performance Computing Facilities, February 23-25, Albuquerque, NM
- Review of Entangled State Quantum Cryptography: Eavesdropping on the Ekert Protocol, Public Report SAND 2006-1297P
- Quantum Dot Cellular Automata (QDCA) Strategic Partnership: Extending Moore's Law: Part 2, Computer Sciences Issues, SAND2006-5382P, final report presentation for National Institute of Nanotech Education (NINE) project under LDRD, August 1, 2006
- Quantum Dot Cellular Automata (QDCA) Strategic Partnership: Extending Moore's Law: Part 1, Physical Sciences Issues, SAND2006-5383P, final report presentation for National Institute of Nanotech Education (NINE) project under LDRD, August 1, 2006
- Issues for the Future of Supercomputing: Impact of Moore's Law and Architecture on Application Performance, Tutorial at SC 06, November 13, 2006, Tampa, FL
- S. Frost-Murphy, M. Ottavi, M. Frank, E. DeBenedictis "On the Design of Reversible QDCA Systems, " SAND2006-5990.
- Exotic Technologies Panel and Time Capsule Submission for Most Exciting Architecture at SC 20, Exotic Technologies Panel Session at SC 06, Tampa, FL, November 13-16, 2006
REPORTS
- Marina Chen, Young-il Choo, Erik DeBenedictis, Jingke Li, and Janet Wu, "Speedup of a financial application using the crystal compiler for hypercubes". Technical Report YALEU/DCS/TR-673, Dept. of Computer Science, Yale University, January 1989.
- E. DeBenedictis, D. Shenton, Finite Element Algorithms for Multiprocessors Using Distributed Variables, Bell Labs Technical Report number 39394
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, "HOMOGENEOUS MACHINE CURRENT STUFF," Lab Notebook for Homogeneous Machine and Nearest Neighbor Concurrent Processor (NNCP), later renamed Cosmic Cube, archived December 1982.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, "The Fabrication of Pc Boards at Caltech," internal document, October 29, 1982.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, "Caltech NNCP Project," presentation, July, 1982.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, "Use of the Global Communications Lines in the Homogeneous Machine," internal document, February 9, 1982.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, "A Communications Operating System for the Homogeneous Machine," Caltech display file 4707.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis and Charles L. Seitz "Homogeneous Machine Technical Plan," project proposal for the Homogeneous Machine and Nearest Neighbor Concurrent Processor (NNCP), later renamed Cosmic Cube, January 9, 1982.
- E. Brooks, G. Fox, R. Gupta, O. Martin, S. Otto, and E. DeBenedictis, "Nearest Neighbor Concurrent Processor," CALT-68-867, DOE Research and Development Report, September 1981.
- Erik DeBenedictis, "Highlights of Design F," September 23, 1981, internal document.
- David Shenton, Erik DeBenedictis, and Bart Locanthi, "Error Correction for PCM Digital Audio Systems," presentation at AES, not in proceedings.
- E.Brooks, G.Fox, R. Gupta, O. Martin, S. Otto, and E. DeBenedictis "Nearest Neighbour Concurrent Processor," unpublished memo, Caltech, September 17, 1981.
- E. DeBenedictis, "A Preliminary Report on the Caltech ARPA Tester Project. Technical Report. California Institute of Technology. [CaltechCSTR:1980.4061-tr-80]
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, User's Manual For A ROM Emulator March, 1978, report.
- Erik P. DeBenedictis, The Z80 Datawidget Microprocessor Development System December, 1977, report.
PARALLEL COMPUTER ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS
I've been encouraged by colleagues to post some documents to the Internet related to the development
of the Cosmic Cube.
At Caltech in 1981, Eugene Brooks and I started a project that was called both the Homogeneous Machine (HM)
and the Nearest Neighbor Concurrent Processor (NNCP). The project grew over time to include many people, as
will be described shortly. The 64 processor version of this machine was subsequently renamed to "Cosmic Cube"
and became a focal point for a growing number of people to develop parallel scientific codes. Users and
Government funders followed the 3 MFLOPS Cosmic Cube with a series of exponentially larger and more powerful
computers for 25 years, up to IBM's current 360 TFLOPS Blue Gene/L supercomputer at Livermore. This
represents a 100 million fold scale-up!
The story I can contribute on this page is to give some background as to why the HM/NNCP/Cosmic Cube
architecture survived repeated downselects and received 100 million fold scale-up where its competitors faltered.
Readers may draw their own conclusions from the original documents I've linked to this site, but my guidance is
to look at two things:
- the strong connection between the architecture and semiconductor scaling and
- the presence
of an user community with a scalable problem right from the time of the architecture.
Competing architectures of the time (SIMD, shared memory, vector), each fared less well on one of these criteria.
The early 1980s were a remarkable period at Caltech:
- Carver Mead and his colleagues were contributing heavily to VLSI design and scaling/
- Richard Feynman was making major contributions to the "physics of computation"
and "quantum computing/"
- A bunch of us in Computer Science and Physics were creating a parallel architecture
destined to be successful.
All these people were working together.
Using unmodified microprocessors, HM/NNCP/Cosmic Cube was the full beneficiary of Moore's Law for microprocessor
performance scaling over almost the entire existance of microprocessors.
Specifically observe that a key 1982
proposal document
for the 3 MFLOPS HM/NNCP/Cosmic Cube contained a diagram (figure 1, page 3) and justification for scaling to a 500 nm semiconductor
process and a system very much like the IBM Blue Gene system
(noting that Blue Gene continued scaling another factor of four to 130 nm).
I have linked digitized versions of documents from the 1980s to the paragraphs below.
The Cosmic Cube project started in the summer of 1981. By the end of the summer, there was a
propoosal document and a
DOE report describing intentions as well as
prototype hardware.
ARPA funded the development of the initial hardware based on this
technical plan, complete with a photograph
of working prototype hardware and with
systems software
operational.
The four-processor, wire wrapped system became the basis for the paper
Glueball Mass Calculations on an Array of Computers
that included many of the simulation principles and computer systems analyses that were repeated many times
in subsequent decades.
By October, 1982, the PC boards were being fabricated for the 64-processor
hardware that was later to be called the Cosmic Cube.
However, I had graduated from Caltech and needed a job. I used this
interview presentation and
other presentation materials,
and got a job at Bell Labs.
As I left Caltech in December, 1982, I put the
hardware lab notebook and
the other hardware lab notebook away. 25 years later
I scanned them and put on the Web.
OTHER
FAMILY DOCUMENTS
OTHER
Date of this document: January, 2008.