ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a new heterogeneous architecture created at the Julich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), its motivation and the development path that led to its final realization. It discusses a historical view of the architectures and main systems co-developed at JSC is given, which led to the actual Modular Supercomputing Architecture. While the Cluster-Booster architecture is being implemented in production, the JSC-team is already working on the development of its next generation systems. The Modular Supercomputing Architecture proposes a new way of integrating heterogeneous hardware at system level. The Modular Supercomputing Architecture is the result of more than a decade experience gathered at the JSC in the co-development, operation, and maintenance of high performance computers. Adjustments and extensions have been implemented on their lower layers to properly support the Modular Supercomputing architecture. The Modular Supercomputing architecture generalizes the idea of segregating heterogeneous resources into individual, interconnected compute modules.
