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High performance computing (HPC) middleware software is a continuously growing technology for IT markets. Over the years, the software has advanced significantly, yet there is an ever increasing demand in performance from users. Today’s solutions need to run faster, with tighter integration between resources and workflows, provide increased reliability and flexibility, while at the same time being efficient and secure.
The demands are in response to the evolution of how people work and interact with their systems. Across industries today, groups comprised of numerous people who are widespread geographically need to collaborate closely over vast distances using datasets that are incessantly growing in size. The organizations as a whole require unique and flexible software computing solutions that run seamlessly with their systems and are able to improve process times while still being affordable.
While great progress has been made in the advancement of HPC software and its capabilities, more can still be achieved. Through commercial and open source community collaboration, skilled members of the HPC community from varied industries and domains can exchange ideas and code to advance the HPC industry as a whole. A dual software licensing option provides the opportunity to engage with a broader user-base to bridge innovations that take place in the open source community and within the commercial sector.
Today PBS Professional®, Altair’s market-leading and trusted HPC workload manager, is used by TOP500 systems and cluster owners to automate job scheduling, management, monitoring and reporting. In anticipation of future demands and needs for HPC software usage, Altair has announced that it will provide an open source licensing option of PBS Professional® (PBS Pro). PBS Pro will become available under two different licensing options for commercial installations and as an Open Source Initiative compliant version. Altair will work closely with Intel and the Linux Foundation’s OpenHPC Collaborative Project to integrate the open source version of PBS Pro.
“Altair’s open source contribution is valuable and will help advance the work of the OpenHPC Collaborative Project,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “By working together to build and extend new technologies for the world’s most complex computing systems, Altair and other members of OpenHPC can accelerate exascale computing.” The open licensing system is scheduled to be released to the open source community in mid-2016.
There is growing demand for open source middleware technology to support high-end HPC computing initiatives and broader access to HPC both on-premise and via the cloud,” says James R. Scapa, Chairman and CEO of Altair. “Our goal is for the open source community to actively participate in shaping the future of PBS Professional driving both innovation and agility. The community’s contributions combined with Altair’s continued research and development, and collaboration with Intel and our HPC technology partners will accelerate the advancement of PBS Pro to aggressively pursue exascale computing initiatives in broad classes and domains.”
“Altair’s decision to open source PBS Professional, an established, production hardened HPC middleware technology, is a key milestone in moving the OpenHPC community closer to achieving exascale computing,” says Charles Wuischpard, vice president and general manager of HPC Platform Group at Intel Corporation. “Altair’s expertise in technical computing and development of distributed highly parallel CAE applications exploit the benefits of HPC. We look forward to continuing to work with Altair as a key partner in socializing advancements and broadening the accessibility of HPC to more industries and workloads.”
The open source licensing option of PBS Pro is planned for general release mid-year 2016 with specific details to be announced at the time. Early access for select partners and customers will be available via the OpenHPC software stack to assist with stack integration, development and testing. Altair intends for the commercial and open source licensing options to share common core functionality.
Altair’s open source licensing option places this highly regarded innovator at the forefront of an important trend,” said Steve Conway, IDC research vice president for HPC. “IDC expects more HPC software vendors will follow Altair’s example to collaborate with the open community to address challenging new requirements and to expand their user bases.”
To become a PBS Pro open source licensing contributor and for the latest information, news and availability, please visit www.pbsworks.com/opensource.
